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| At The Door Of The House Who Will Come Knocking Photo: Courtesy of Sheffield DocFest |
Sheffield DocFest announced its winners yesterday with Maja Novaković's feature debut At The Door Of The House Who Will Come Knocking taking the Grand Jury Award in the International Comptetition. The co-production between Serbia and Bosnia Herzegovina observes an elderly man living alone in a story the jury said "reveals a story of isolation and trauma in a landscape of beauty yet deep historial scars".
In the International First Feature Competition, Inma de Reyes' The Boy And The Suit Of Lights took home the top prize. The film from the Scottish-based Spanish director charts several years in the life of a teenager as he tries to realise his family's dream for him of becoming a bullfighter.
Flowers, by José Cardoso won the International Short Film Competition prize, while the Tim Hetherington Award was presented to Basel Adra, Yuval Abraham, Rachel Szor and Hamdan Ballal for No Other Land. The Youth Jury selected HAIYU - Rebel Singer Mariem Hassan and the Struggle for a Free Western Sahara, directed by Alex Veitch, Brahim B. Ali, Mohamedsalem Uered and Anna Klara Åhrén.
The Audience Award went to Strike: An Uncivil War, which will have a UK release on Friday, June 21.
This year's festival featured 48 World Premieres, 14 International Premieres, 17 European Premieres, 28 UK Premieres from 56 countries of production.
It saw public attendance up by more than 20 per cent on last year. International industry attendance also rose with 2283 delegates from 73 countries attending the six-day festival in person (up from 60 countries in 2023). 179 Industry Representatives from 128 companies and 24 countries took more than 1031 in-person meetings with 49 selected projects and 16 ‘talents’ over the course of the festival market days.
