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| Marygoround Photo: Courtesy of Fantasia |
Described by the jury as a "visually arresting aria of a uniquely female experience," Marygoround has won Best Film at this year's Fantasia International Film Festival with its director, Daria Woszek, receiving the Best Director award, it was announced today. Star Grazyna Misiorowska won Best Actress for her "tour de force performance...a masterclass in spellbinding stunning nuance, heart-stopping vulnerability, emotional authenticity and true comic genius." Misiorowska also received a special mention from the New Flesh jury, which focuses on début films: "This dynamic lead performance took a protagonist from virginal innocence to wild, untamed experience, requiring great skill and deft to transform a character from scene to scene and often within a single scene."
Speaking to Eye For Film, Woszek described herself as "overwhelmed and happy and shocked" and praised Fantasia for the experience they had managed to create online, giving her the chance to interact with viewers "almost like watching and feeling their emotions at the real screening in the theatre."
Best Actor went to Jacky Heung for Chasing Dream, partly in recognition of the physical demands of his performance, while there was a special mention for Cho Jin-woong for his work in South Korean film Me And Me. Brea Grant (who also wrote and starred in Lucky) won Best Script for 12 Hour Shift, a hit at both Fantasia and this year's Frightfest, while Shiro Sagisu took the Best Score award for musical romcom Wotakoi: Love Is Hard For Otaku.
The winner of the New Flesh award was hyperkinetic Vietnamese portrait of street kids Ròm, with the jury saying "Among 14 quality contenders, this film was flush with actors we'd never heard of before but now anxiously await to see again, telling a visceral story of desperation with just the right amount of humour and room to breathe," and praising its "thrilling cinematography that took us right out on the street, its economical and artful character development, and its overall inventiveness."
Over 85,000 people watched films or attended events at the festival, which ran virtually because of the Covid-19 epidemic.
