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Independent Awards

Ministry of Women, Gender Policies and Diversity of the Province of Buenos Aires
Best Argentine director whose feature film stands out for gender perspective in the Argentine, Latin American and International Competitions
The Eva Landeck Award to Laura Citarella for feature film Trenque Lauquen by Laura Citarella.
JURY STATEMENT:
For the playful daring of the future of the main protagonists who are not afraid to strip themselves of patriarchal mandates and exceed the framework of a canonical, pre-established and comfortable life, to launch into a life in perpetual movement in search of their own desires. Around the lagoon (Trenque Lauquen means “Round Lagoon”) -as well as the narrative axis of the film- senses are metaphorically condensed where the monstrous, in contrast to the androcentric canon of the fantastic genre, is not something to be eliminated but rather a challenge. in perpetual mutation and an opportunity to forge new alliances.

Honorable Mention: To Mara Pescio for the feature film Barrio Modelo
JURY STATEMENT:
For the gender sensitivity in the treatment of the archive material, the quality of the research work and the wonderful gesture of giving voice and body to an absent protagonist without judging her.

Jury: Estela Díaz (Ministra de las Mujeres, Políticas de Género y Diversidad Sexual de la Provincia de Buenos Aires), Victoria Onetto (Subsecretaría de Políticas Culturales, Instituto Cultural de la Provincia de Buenos Aires); María Ángeles Anchou (Programa Gafas Violetas del Instituto Nacional de Cine y Artes Audiovisuales)

RECAM - Reunión Especializada de Autoridades Cinematográficas y Audiovisuales del MERCOSUR (Specialized Meeting of Cinematographic and Audiovisual Authorities of MERCOSUR)
Section: Latin American, Argentina and Altered States Competitions.
RECAM Award for Best Short Film of the Mercosur region for Las habitaciones vacías by Julia Pesce
JURY STATEMENT:
For presenting a portrait in contradiction to the ideal of motherhood. With powerful performances by the protagonists and the freshness of the young girl who brings sweetness to the narrative, the work approaching motherhood from an uncomfortable place that manages to move us and invites us to reflect on the roles of parenting, exhaustion, anguish, loneliness and that ambivalence between what should be and what can really be done in the face of responsibilities and mandates. It shows us the woman, the mother from another angle, where being is confronted with what should be, motherhood, personal development, the transition between what is morally correct and the fact of existing are challenged.

Honorable Mention: Las arañas by Sol Giancaspro
JURY STATEMENT:
For generating, with an intelligent script and an attractive job of editing, an entertaining proposal that invites us to reflect upon one of the most current and highly relevant sociocultural issues in the present context. The documentary dialogues with that cybernetic fear that treats our data as currency of power. It presents a warning to the entire society, manipulated through the use of social networks: a reality of which we are part and, more often than not, are unaware of.

Jury: Specialists from Argentina, Brasil, Paraguay and Uruguay

FNA - National Fund for the Arts
Best Short Film of the Argentine Competition
Tie between Las habitaciones vacías by Julia Pesce and Carne de Dios by Patricio Plaza

Honorable Mention: Marcelo Subiotto for his performance in the short film Los Misterios del Mundo by Mariano Luque.

Jurado: Laura Citarella, Laura Barneix, Eliana Digiovani

AADA - Argentine Association of Art Directors
AADA Award for Best Feature Film Art Direction in the International Competition
Micaela Urrutia and Ángela Torti for Tres hermanos by Francisco J. Paparella.
JURY STATEMENT:
For conveying the harshness and hostility of both the characters and their environment. The work on multiple locations builds a brutal atmosphere, a portrait of a rarely exhibited Patagonia. A Patagonia that goes deep inside...dark, dramatic and complex. Sordid spaces, inhabited but desolate, that portray toxic, suffocating, drowned masculinities. Postcards from a hostile territory where nature appears terrible and dangerous.

Jury: Julián Romera, María Battaglia, Matías Martínez

CINEMA IN PRISONS PROGRAM
The Cinema in Prisons program has been working for six years for access to the right to culture for people deprived of their liberty, understanding it as an essential right for human development.
Honorable Mention: La Danza de Los Mirlos by Álvaro Luque.
STATEMENT:
For his participation in the activity in the Penitentiary Unit No. 15 of Batán, the interaction with the detainees and for being a work that exposes the culture and idiosyncrasy of the region through an icon of popular music.

Honorable Mention: La uruguaya by Ana García Blaya
STATEMENT:
For its participation in the screening at Batán Penitentiary Unit No. 15, the interaction with the detainees, and for being an optimistic film that shows us that crises are also opportunities.

Special Acknowledgment: to Dr. Valeria Sampayo, former director of institutional policies of the Buenos Aires Penitentiary Service.
STATEMENT:
Because of her work for access to culture and her commitment to the human rights of people deprived of their liberty.

ADF - Autores de Fotografía Cinematográfica Argentina (Authors of Argentine Cinematographic Photography)
Best Direction of Photography in the International Feature Film Competition
Rui Xavier for his work in Lobo e Cao by Claudia Varejão.
JURY STATEMENT:
Lobo e Cão invites us to go through playful vignettes that make the viewer enjoy the scenes as moving paintings. For its hypnotic sensoriality that accompanies the narrative with simplicity and drama. The images catch us and enclose us suggestively in close-up shots that make us empathize with the characters, their conflicts and feelings.

Jury: Alejandra Martin, Alejo Maglio, Pigu Gómez

SIGNIS - World Catholic Association for Communication
Best film in International Competition
Saudade fez morada aqui dentro by director Haroldo Borges.
JURY STATEMENT:
For narrating frankly and empathetically, how a Bahian child, from his innocence and freshness, has to experience a painful process of blindness, and like his family and community, they collaborate with solidarity together, so that from the inside he can rebuild his life, adapting to this new reality. The film shows us how even in the greatest difficulty, we can find hope, compassion and brotherhood.

Honorable Mention: Los de abajo by Alejandro Quiroga.
JURY STATEMENT:
Many Latin American communities suffer ecological and environmental misfortunes as a result of power systems that impose their interests over the needs of the people, leading them to marginalization, ostracism and forced migration. The film, which masterfully narrates the struggle of a farmer from Tarija, invites us to an urgent debate for the collective resolution of these problems.

Jury: Karim González (Argentina), Adrián Baccaro (Argentina), Alejandro Caro Contreras (Chile)

EDA - Asociación Argentina de Editores Audiovisuales (Argentine Association of Audiovisual Editors)
Best Editing in the International Competition
Haroldo Borges and Juliano Castro for Saudade fez morada aquí dentro by Haroldo Borges
JURY STATEMENT:
This film uses montage as a vehicle to convey the value and strength of its characters, managing to shape a unique material that is sensitive to the reality in which it was filmed. The editors manage to build a poetic with naturalistic and close performances, managing the rhythm and structure impeccably. The film thus becomes a true emotional experience that allows us to witness the days and contradictions of its characters, but above all the affection that circulates between them. Saudade fez morada aquí dentro seems to have been written in the editing room, in an artisanal and loving labor by its editors.

Jury: Lucía Torres Minoldo (Argentina), Sabrina Wilkins (Brazil), Job ter Burg (Netherlands)

WOMEN AND CINEMA
Section: National feature films directed by women from all the sections in competition.
A new perspective Award for Melisa Liebenthal for her film El rostro de la medusa
JURY STATEMENT:
It provides a new, fresh and innovative gaze, in which it combines different genres with total narrative freedom, in its search for its own authorial identity.

Honorable Mention: María Aparicio for Sobre las Nubes
JURY STATEMENT:
For providing a genuine and tender look at the characters of her native Córdoba, their social condition and search for work.

Jury: Annamaría Muchnik, Anahí Berneri, Mon Chus

APIMA - Asociación de Productores Independientes de Medios Audiovisuales (Association of Independent Producers of Audiovisual Media)
Section: Latin American Competition.
Distribution Award is for Amigas en un camino de campo by Santiago Loza
JURY STATEMENT:
Takes the risk of telling stories of loss, absence and reunion in a beautifully poetic way. Two friends who share the love of a recently deceased colleague. The daughter of one of them who returns to confront and resolve her conflict with her mother. Her childhood best friend who reframes her destiny. A lost object that falls from the sky and serves as an excuse to go for a walk. All of them united by the ghost of a writer who intertwines all these protagonists through the words of her poems.

Jury: Vanesa Pagani, Hernán Virues, Mario Levit

FIPRESCI - International Federation of Film Press
Best Film in Latin American Competition
Tengo sueños eléctricos by Valentina Maurel.
JURY STATEMENT:
There is a permanent but subtle violence in the picture that is displayed in this film, which is reflected in the careful approach to harmful, contagious and recognizable family ties: a violence that is more psychological than physical, far from what is usually be represented in the movies. The peculiar approach to the daily life of the questions of a teenager, makes the audience uncomfortable and leads them to experience situations of toxicity and manipulation. Tengo sueños eléctricos is an impressive debut film made in Costa Rica, a country usually poorly represented at film festivals.

Jury: Elaine Guerini (Brazil), Valentina Giraldo Sánchez (Colombia), Diego Faraone (Uruguay)

SICA APMA - Sindicato de la Industria Cinematográfica Argentina - Animación, Publicidad y Medios Audiovisuales (Union of the Argentine Film Industry - Animation, Advertising and Audiovisual Media)
SICA APMA "Tato Miller" Award for Best Technical Achievement and Treatment of Social Issues in Latin American Competition
El visitante by Martín Boulocq
JURY STATEMENT:
For its technical quality and the quality of its acting, and for making a metaphorical representation of the social realities of Bolivia, but also of all of Latin America, of the historical social struggles, between the bourgeois classes with colonial heritage and the working class, and how power structures capitalize on the suffering of the weakest in society. The film also highlights the growth of the evangelical church as a new form of dependency and financial and ideological oppression of the most vulnerable. Elegantly shot, it explores the father-daughter bond with warmth and humanity.

Jury: Adriana Vior, María Sol Muñoz, Mariano Cukar

FEISAL - Federación de Escuelas de Cine de América Latina (Federation of Latin American Film Schools)
AWARD: Best Film in International, Latin American and Argentine competition made by a Latin American director up to 35 years old
Tengo sueños eléctricos by Valentina Maurel
JURY STATEMENT:
We unanimously consider that Valentina Maurel's debut film tells stories that transcend the borders of Costa Rica. She challenges the forms of interpersonal treatment, emphasizing the vulnerabilities between love and violence. From the mise-en-scene she builds a hyperrealistic universe with an intimate audiovisual poetics, offering characters who go through contradictions and affective frustrations, without forgetting the framework of identity, the society and the culture in which they live. Familiarity, intimacy, love and violence, elements with which the director investigates the universe of ties and from there, she proposes a possibility of growth.

First Honorable Mention: Sobre las Nubes by María Aparicio.
JURY STATEMENT:
Because it proposes a formal synthesis between what we could call an observational process and a fictional construction. It supports a daring filmic temporality, but necessary to portray the times of life, a representation of an authentic time, of an exhaustive description of everyday life. The filming of a naturalist acting sustains the impression of reality proposed from the setting. Photography reflects a special sensitivity that contains the proposed universe. The filming in black and white colors the dreams and desires of its characters, those who nest beyond the clouds.

Second Mention: Anhell69 by Theo Montoya.
JURY STATEMENT:
With an audiovisual language that cannot be labeled, with rawness and beauty, with poetry and the effect of reality, with presences and absences, the film exposes a hopeless reality, narrated in the first person. A truncated fiction, of dead protagonists, a trans film about the life of some angels without parents, young people who have been excluded, marginalized from love, understanding and opportunities, who together become family, intertwined with each other to sustain themselves. The setting is Medellín and the resonances of the figure of Pablo Escobar frame this portrait that wonders about the future, in this filmic wake-up call, which whispers and shouts.

Jury: María Cecilia Christensen, Carlos Ernesto Acosta Posada, Marianela Constantino

SAE - Sociedad Argentina de Editores Audiovisuales (Argentine Society of Audiovisual Editors)
Best Argentinian Feature Film Editing in Argentine Films in National and Latin American Competition
Andrés Pepe Estrada, Florencia Gómez García and Miguel De Zuviría for Barrio Modelo by Mara Pescio.
JURY STATEMENT:
The prize is awarded in response to the expertise in the choice and assembly of the archive material, with a feeling that is not only narrative but also dramatic and poetic; the careful work on the voiceover, in effective counterpoint with the visual and musical components; the construction of a narrative structure that manages to convey the pain of a family tragedy inscribed in a historical context that adds a lyrical dimension; and the successful integration of the different photographic and film materials with sound recordings to achieve a balanced, precise and moving composition.

Jury: Alejandro Carrillo Penovi, Julia Straface, Cecilia Almeida Saquieres

RAFMA - Red Argentina de Festivales y Muestras Audiovisuales (Argentine Network of Festivals and Audiovisual Screening programs)
RAFMA - Edgardo “Pipo” Bechara El Khoury Award for the best short film in the Argentine competition
Tres cinematecas by Nicolás Suárez
JURY STATEMENT:
From a place of commitment, but fundamentally from a love for what forges our identity through a heritage that is exhibited as abandoned, but without that nostalgic impulse dispensing with a look of resistance through echoes of those and those who have resisted and denounced so that the realization of others does not disappear; knowing that cinema is not only the past, but is also the freshness of the spontaneous.

Jury: Eduardo Marún, Nora Di Domenica, Silvina Szperling

ACCA - Asociación de Cronistas Cinematográficos de Argentina (Association of Cinematographic Press of Argentina)
Best Film of the Argentine Competition
Sobre las Nubes by María Aparicio
JURY STATEMENT:
For its powerful and attractive cinematographic proposal, the rich gallery of characters it presents and the way in which it questions the present through fiction, serving as a portrait of an era when the world of work, precariousness and unemployment reveal the loneliness and fragility of today's world

Honorable Mention: Te prometo una larga amistad by Jimena Repetto
JURY STATEMENT:
For highlighting the friendship between a representative figure of Argentine culture such as Victoria Ocampo and the Romanian philosopher and playwright Benjamín Fondane in an original and playful way, with a playful approach between reality and fiction that allows us to reflect about freedom, get involved in the interesting people interviewed and enrich ourselves with the historical data narrated in the film.

Jury: Manuel Germano, Mercedes Orden, Jesica Taranto

PCI - Asociación de Directorxs de Cine PCI - PROYECTO DE CINE INDEPENDIENTE (Association of Film Directors PCI - INDEPENDENT CINEMA PROJECT)
PCI Film Directors Award for "Artistic Innovation" in Argentine Films in All Competitions - Debuts and Second Fovies
ERRANTE: La conquista del hogar by Adriana Lestido
JURY STATEMENT:
In this age of humanity where immediacy and the ephemeral reign, this film proposes a return to an essential action of the human being: contemplation. Observing and inhabiting the environment of a place as inhospitable and magical as the North Pole, where the artist dares to offer an ancestral journey into our own interior. With the enormous courage to recover the origins not only of being, but also of the cinematographic experience so that it may continue to occur in a movie theater.

Jury: Benjamín Ávila, Luján Loioco, Martín Desalvo

ASA - Asociación Argentina de Sonidistas Audiovisuales (Argentine Association of Audiovisual Sound Engineers)
Best soundtrack in Argentine Films in All Official Competitions
Lucas Larriera and Marcos Canosa for Hace mucho que no duermo by Agustín Godoy
JURY STATEMENT:
The Jury unanimously agrees to award the prize to this film for its inexhaustible inventiveness in creating landscapes and sound portraits that tirelessly dialogue with the image, without resigning themselves to mere realism, always encouraging themselves to enrich the narrative with the most varied means. Behind each sound event, the existence of a solid narrative plot is perceived that, together with a fast montage, merge creating a novel story that shows undoubted technical quality. Its original dialogues in verse, the screeching of rubber soles in a reverberating room, the National Anthem in the voice of a lyrical singer, the horn of the trains, the organ of a church, and even a classic from the 80s playing in the car stereo, are just some of the significant moments of a memorable soundtrack.

Honorable Mention: Roberta Ainstein for Herbaria by Leandro Listorti

Jury: Martín Gabriel Scaglia, Gaspar Scheuer, Nerina Grisel Valido

AATI - Asociación Argentina de Traductores e Intérpretes (Argentine Association of Translators and Interpreters)
Best Short Film of the Argentine Competition
Carne de Dios by Patricio Plaza.
JURY STATEMENT:
Due to the prominence of sound and visual stimuli, which require their replacement through descriptive subtitling and audio description, so that the public of people with visual and hearing disabilities can understand the plot and enjoy the material; as well as for its strong message of social condemnation and revaluation of ancestral cultures.

Jury: Federico Sykes, Fernando Galarraga, María Laura Ramos

APAC - Asociación de productores audiovisuales de Córdoba (Association of Audiovisual Producers of Córdoba)
Paola Suárez Award - Best Argentine Film
Náufrago by Martín Farina and Willy Villalobos
JURY STATEMENT:
For its exquisite formal treatment that immerses us in an oneiric atmosphere that, together with the first-person account of a throat-clearing voice, slowly leads us until the protagonist and his story emerge from the images.

Honorable Mention: Luminum by Maximiliano Schonfeld

Jury: Rosendo Ruíz, Natali Córdoba, Sofía Castells

APPLAA - Asociación de Productoras y Productores de Locaciones Audiovisuales de Argentina (Association of Producers and Producers of Audiovisual Locations of Argentina)
Best Argentinian Movie Location Design of All Competitions
Esteban Musacchio for Tres hermanos by Francisco Paparella
JURY STATEMENT:
The expressiveness achieved from the use of locations in the film appears without respite. The Patagonian landscapes selected for the film help to generate discomfort and nourish the story as a reflection of the unsaid. In Tres hermanos, hostile nature works both as a mirror of violence and as a foretaste of the imminent tragedy.

Jury: Danisa Munguia, Marcelo Martínez, Sebastián Cerezo

Fundación SAGAI (SAGAI Foundation)
Section: Argentine Films in All Competitions.
Patacón de Cine Award fot Best female performance
Julieta Raponi for Juana Banana by Matías Szulanski
JURY STATEMENT:
For her empathetic interpretation of Juana. Her truth reaveled before others and before the camera, dazzles through her subtle freshness.

Patacón de Cine Award for Best male performance
Ignacio Quesada for Cambio Cambio by Lautaro García Candela.
JURY STATEMENT:
For his precise and honest performance that, without underlining appearances or forcing the composition, invites us to follow the wanderings of his character through minimal gestures.

Jury: Mirta Busnelli, Esther Goris, Daniel Hendler

ARGENTORES - Sociedad General de Autores de la Argentina (General Society of Authors of Argentina)
ARGENTORES Award for Best National Feature Film Screenplay of All Competitions
Agustín Godoy and Melisa Liebenthal for El Rostro De La Medusa by Melisa Liebenthal
JURY STATEMENT:
Due to the resounding originality of its approach and the precision and dramatic sparseness in the narrative development inserted in the voluptuous diversity of the universe of animal and human persons that contains it, El rostro de la medusa leads to an imperious question about identity. An unrealistic proposal that, creatively, illuminates what is real.

Jury: Graciela Maglie, Martín Salinas, Luisa Irene Ickowicz

DAC - Directores Argentinos Cinematográficos (Argentine Film Directors)
Best Argentine Director of Feature Films of all Competitions
Francisco Paparella for Tres hermanos

Jury: Carmen Guarini, Alejandro Maci, Marco Berger