“Corn Island” with the Audience Award at Tofifest 2014
The audience of the Tofifest International Film Festival has chosen the Georgian Corn Island by George Ovashvili as the best film of the festival. This was the last award to be awarded at the 12th edition of the festival in Torun. The guests to the festival included, among others, Daniel Olbrychski, Danuta Szaflarska, Bohdan Slama, Jerzy Hoffman, and Tomasz Wasilewski.
The counting of the votes cast by the audience at Tofifest was completed on Monday morning (the last screenings of the festival ended late at night, after midnight on Monday). Corn Island won by just a narrow margin with the Estonian-Georgian Tangerines by Zaza Urushadze.
The Audience Award in Torun is yet another festival laurel that goes to Corn Island at Tofifest. The first of the awards was an honorary mention given by the professional jury in the On Air main competition. The film was also appreciated by the Students Jury. In the justification to the award, it was described as a simple, subtle, but also a very beautiful film, in the true meaning of the word.
It must be added that just a few months ago the film was a unanimous winner at this year’s edition of the Karlovy Vary IFF and it was also nominated the official Georgian candidate for Academy Awards. The plot of the film takes us back to 1992, on the borderland between Georgia and Abkhazia, right in the middle of a civil war. Both countries are divided by a river, in the middle of which there is a small island, where an old farmer and his teenage granddaughter start growing corn.
Corn Island is an artistically ascetic drama that includes only a few dialogue lines. The Hollywood Reporter wrote that Georgian director George Ovashvili weaves a powerful life-and-death fable from simple ingredients in this almost wordless drama. Variety has called the film masterclass of emotional minimalism, in which the old masters like Bresson, Tarkovsky, Kaneto Shindo, and Terrence Malick resound. And with a little touch of “The Tempest” by Shakespeare. One may find it interesting to learn that filmmakers from as many as 13 countries joined forces to work on this Georgian-German-French-Czech coproduction.
Grand Prix of the 12th Edition of Tofifest went to Ukraine, as the Golden Angel in the main competition was given to The Tribe by Myroslav Slaboshpytskiy. The Silver Angel for directing went to Ruben Östlund from Sweden for The Tourist. As for the main award in the Shortcut competition, it was given to a film from France. It was given for Thunderbirds by Léa Mysius. The winner in the From Poland competition of Polish films was Waterline by Michal Otlowski, while the winner of the Lokalizacje competition turned out to be Bydgoszcz from dawn till dusk.
Additionally, there were also the first ever awards in the Audiowizje Festival that is from now on part of Tofifest. The winner of the Audiowizje Showcase competition was Stardust Memories from Warsaw. The award for the best visualisation went to Alters. Finally, the main prize in the Muzyka do nakręcenia competition went to HOAP.
There was also a number of Special Golden Angels of Tofifest awarded at the festival. The Golden Angel for Artistic Insolence went to the actor Daniel Olbrychski, the Golden Angel for Outstanding European Actress to Agata Kulesza, the Golden Angel for Lifetime Achievement to the director Jerzy Hoffman and the actress Danuta Szaflarska, the Golden Angel for an Outstanding European Filmmaker to the Czech film director Bohdan Slama, and the Flisak of Tofifest to film directors Miroslaw Dembinski and Tomasz Wasilewski.
The 13th edition of Tofifest will take place in October 2015.
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