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| Saulė Bliuvaitė with her Golden Leopard for Toxic Photo: Locarno Film Festival / Ti-Press |
Saulė Bliuvaitė's debut feature Toxic (Akiplėša) has won the Golden Leopard top prize at the Locarno Film Festival.
Her drama is a gritty coming-of-ager, with experimental touches, set in a bleak industrial town in Lithuania. It also took home the First Feature award. The Special Jury Prize went to Moon, directed by Kurdwin Ayub, about a kickboxer who takes on a job as a personal trainer in the Middle East.
It has been a good week for Lithuania, with Laurynas Bareiša’s Drowning Dry also picking up multiple prizes. A puzzle box of a film, set around a family tragedy, it won the Best Director Leopard plus two of the gender-neutral acting awards for Gelminė Glemžaitė, Agnė Kaktaitė, Giedrius Kiela and Paulius Markevičius.
The other acting prize went to Kim Minhee for Hong Sangsoo’s By The Stream. There were special mentions for Wang Bing's Youth (Hard Times) and Mar Coll's Salve Maria. In the Filmmakers of the Present competition, the Golden Leopard was given to Georgian director Tato Kotetishvili for Holy Electricity, which tells the story of two cousins trying to make some cash in Tbilisi. Denise Fernandes was named the Best Emerging Director for Hanami.
The special jury prize Ciné+ went to Maxime Jean-Baptiste’s Listen To The Voices. In the same section, the acting prizes went to Callie Hernandez, for Courtney Stephens’ Invention, and Anna Mészöly for Bálint Szimler’s Lesson Learned.
The winner of the Mubi award was Sylvie Ballyot for her documentary Green Line.The Prix du Public UBS audience award for the Piazza Grande films went to Reinas, directed by Swiss-Peruvian Klaudia Reynicke. The inaugural Letterboxd Piazza Grande, selected by a youth jury, went to Michael Dweck, Gregory Kershaw's documentary Gaucho Gaucho.
In the additional competitions. Toxic won the Ecumenical prize, the Europa Cinemas Label prize went to Mond and FIPRESCI garlanded Youth (Hard Times).
