First annual Verona International Film Festival announces juried award winners

Selected from more than 2.000 submissions, this year’s Festival includes 21 features, 29 short films, 17 experimental films, and 16 LGBT films from 28 countries. This year’s award winning films include 2 world premiers, 2 international premieres, 1 European premiere, 4 Italian premieres and 1 Venice premiere.

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The winners and awards are as follows: 

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BEST NARRATIVE FEATURE FILM: Like A Cast Shadow (Germany) by Michael Krummenacher. Sibylle, a pragmatic architect, mother and wife, witnesses a fatal accident of a woman her age while on vacation in Italy. Devastated by this, the perception of her life and her family starts to change. Something inside of her has been set in motion that seems to endanger everything which she has defined herself by...

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BEST DOCUMENTARY FEATURE FILM: Yximalloo (Ireland) by Tadhg O'Sullivan and Feargal Ward. In a quiet Dublin suburb, in a strange and cluttered house, silence and uncertainty reign. Amongst the countless cassettes, records, posters and mementoes of a career on the margins of marginal music, Yximalloo considers his future. Across the smoke-filled room, his partner passes another day at his ancient computer, glancing habitually at the CCTV monitors, pausing to talk to the cat. Yximalloo is uncertain. He cannot sleep. He misses Japan. He has nothing to do. Dressed in green lycra leggings, glove puppets on his hands, he sets out once more to win over a tiny Dublin audience… Yximalloo is a unique portrait of unique and difficult man, his inability and unwillingness to fit in and the countless conflicts that threaten to tear him apart.

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BEST NARRATIVE SHORT FILm: Girl - Chapter 1 & 2 (Denmark) by Mie Skjoldemose. A coming of age shortfilm, that shows two ages of girl's adolence life. The shortfilm is a visuel and sonic experience with elements from the musicvideo-genre.

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BEST ANIMATED SHORT FILM: The Red Witch (United States) by Aron Bothman. A geologist on Mars fights alone to uncover the planet's secrets before the green of terraforming covers it forever.
 

BEST DOCUMENTARY SHORT FILM: An Italian Marriage (United Kingdom) by Mia Frigieri-Baldwin. An exploration of love, marriage and compatibility between two people who have shared a greater part of their adult lives together. This is the Italian Marriage.
 

BEST EXPERIMENTAL FILM: Plethora (Germany) by Annique Delphine. An experimental film exploring female sensuality, beauty, and desire versus the powerlessness women can feel when faced with societal expectations of gender roles and relationships formed by patriarchal systems.
 

BEST STUDENT FILM: Pipe Dreamer (Denmark) by Izzy Bautista. Small town Uri is a satellite in Copenhagen, floating around and searching for his place in the city. One night he accompanies a young drag queen on the way to the metro, and their short conversation inspires him to transcend fear and start living a little more flamboyantly.
 

BEST LGBT FILM: Cecil & Carl (United States) by Elvis Leon, Gaston Yvorra. Cecil has lived alone in a giant house ever since Carl, his partner of 43 years, was diagnosed with advanced dementia and admitted to a nursing home. Not about grand gestures of love or being gay, this story focuses on commitment and the duties that come with it.
 

BEST DANCE FILM: Abismo (Canada) by Pablo Diconca. A man and a woman drifting on a raft, dance with their instincts by choosing the only possible escape...
 

Verona New Vision: Sway (Hong Kong) by Faiyaz Jafri. Sway is a non-narrative computer generated film that celebrates body hair and rock gods.
 

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