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| Maquia: When The Promised Flower Blooms, winner of this year's L'Écran Fantastique award |
This year's Fantasia Film Festival has come to an end after a highly successful run which saw almost 100,000 people attend and over 80 screenings sell out. The final batch of awards has been announced, with Lee Hae-young's Believer taking the coveted Action! award. "A gripping story supported by credible characters, convincingly performed," said the jury. "The direction is flawless, with action scenes in the service of the story, and not the other way around."
Other big winners were Maquia: When The Promised Flower Blooms, which won L'Écran Fantastique award "for the high quality of its animation, its exceptional sense of staging, at once epic and intimate, and the universal depth of its script," and Bodied, which won the Séquences award for "its exciting re-invention of the sports film as a performance art that breathlessly captures the kinetic energy, tension, danger and social power (and fun) of battle rap." Lizzie Zhang's Wishing Box won the My First Fantasia award, with Made In France and Drôle De Poisson runners-up.
Next year's festival will run from 11 July to 1 August.
Those awards in full:-
Best Asian Feature
- Gold - 1987: When The Day Comes (South Korea, Dir: Jang Joon-hwan)
- Silver - One Cut Of The Dead (Japan, Dir: Shinichiro Ueda)
- Bronze - The Travelling Cat Chronicles (Japan, Dir: Kôichirô Miki)
Best European, North-South American Feature
- Gold - Terrified (Argentina, Dir: Demián Rugna)
- Silver - Heavy Trip (Belgium-Finland-Norway, Dir: Jukka Vidgren, Juuso Laatio)
- Bronze - Searching (USA, Dir: Aneesh Chaganty)
Best Canadian or Quebec Feature
- Gold - Montreal Dead End (Canada, Dir: Various)
- Silver - Le Nid (Canada, Dir: David Paradis)
- Bronze - Knuckleball (Canada, Dir: Michael Peterson)
Best Animated Feature
- Gold - Penguin Highway (Japan, Dir: Hiroyasu Ishida)
- Silver - Crisis Jung (France, Dir: Baptiste Gaubert, Jérémie Hoarau)
- Bronze - Violence Voyager (Japan, Dir: Ujicha)
Guru Prize – Best Action Feature
- Gold - Chuck Steel: Night Of The Trampires (UK, Dir: Mike Mort)
- Silver - The Witch: Part 1. The Subversion (South Korea, Dir: Park Hoon-jung)
- Bronze - Believer (South Korea, Dir: Lee Hae-young)
Best Documentary
- Gold - Boiled Angels: The Trial Of Mike Diana (USA, Dir: Frank Henenlotter)
Best Short Film
- Gold - Fire In Cardboard City (New Zealand, Dir: Phil Brough)
- Silver - Eau De Jésus (Canada, Dir: Mat Rich)
- Bronze - Entropia (USA, Dir: Marinah Janello)
