| Somewhere Tonight and Sing Your Song Win American Film Festival |
| 22 November 2011 | By FNE Staff |
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WROCLAW The second edition of the American Film Festival in Wrocław, the only film event in Poland focused on American independent cinema, awarded its top prizes to Somewhere Tonight and Sing Your Song at the closing gala on 20 November 2011. The audience saw 76 films, including 40 Polish film, six European films, and one world premiere.
The Wrocław festival saw Polish premieres of the latest films by Gus van Sant, Whit Stillman, Todd Solondz, Miranda July, Errol Morris, Philip Seymour Hoffman and Tony Kaye. It also hosted retrospectives of Billy Wilder, Terrence Malick, Joe Swanberg and Todd Solondz. Solondz was a guest of the festival and received the Indie Star Award - a prize for leading independent US auteurs. The director of Palindromes held an excellent masterclass and his latest film Dark Horse opened the festival on 15 November. The other filmmaker in focus, Joe Swanberg, was also a guest of the festival. His latest film Caitlin Plays Herself had its world premiere in Wrocław. Other guests included: Michael Di Jiacomo, Matthew Lessner, Susanne Rostock, Michael Tully, Bryan Storkel and Allison Bagnall, among others. Around 140 guests, filmmakers, producers, critics and sales agents, from Poland and abroad, came to Wrocław for this edition of the festival. The 2nd American Film Festival also hosted the first edition of the industry event Gotham in Progress (GiP) - the first meeting of US indie filmmakers with films in final stages of production with European buyers and programmers. The event showed 11 films at closed screenings. |
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The awards were
given in the American Docs and Spectrum sections after an audience vote.. Out
of the 11 US features, the viewers chose Somewhere
Tonight (2011) by Michael Di Jiacomo, a comedy starring John Turturro and Katherine
Borowitz. The best documentary was Sing
Your Song (2011) by Susanne Rostock, recently shortlisted for the Academy
Award. The film is an inspiring portrait of Harry Belafonte. The winning films
were given $10,000 and $5,000 respectively.
