Saturday was the last day of screenings, talks, round tables, outdoor films and concerts of the Buenos Aires International Independent Film Festival. Approximately 380,000 people attended this year’s events, which included 412 films from 37 countries around the world.
The BAFICI awards were announced on Friday by BAFICI director Marcelo Panozzo and the festival’s programmers, Violeta Bava, Javier Porta Fouz, Juan Manuel Domínguez, Leandro Listorti and Fran Gayo.
‘Court’, directed by Chaitanya Tamhane (India), won the International Competition, with Best Director going to Nadav Lapid for the movie ‘The Kindergarten Teacher’ (Israel). An Argentine actress, Verónica Llinás, took the Best Actress award in the International Competition for her impressive performance in ‘La mujer de los perros’ (Laura Citarella).
‘La Princesa de Francia’ by Matías Piñeiro, another of the director’s whimsical takes on Shakespeare, took the award in the Argentine Competition. The award for best director in the Argentine competition went to José Celestino Campusano for the film ‘Place y Martirio’. The film ‘Una jeunesse allemande’ by the French director Jean-Gabriel Périot received a special mention from the jury. Visit the festival website for the full list of the festival’s awards.
There were many highlights to this year’s festival, including the screening of the first feature-length Argentine film, ‘Amalia’, at the Teatro Colón; the strong presence of this year’s guest country, France, which included a retrospective of Isabelle Huppert, who attended the festival and participated in a talk with artist Guillermo Kuitca; an homage to Jaco Pastorius at La Usina de Arte as part of the premier of a documentary about the pianist, ‘Jaco’; high attendance at all of the festival’s events, including the outdoor screenings at the Parque Centenario amphitheatre.
An outdoor screening at Parque Centenario
With this being an election year, no one is entirely certain whether Panozzo will continue as the festival’s director next year and what place the new municipal authorities will give the festival on its culture agenda. However, BAFICI has been growing steadily since its founding, and with the audiences, directors, industry people and film critics the festival attracts, it certainly seems likely that Buenos Aires can expect another ten days of non-stop screenings and events in April 2016, as it has for the past 17 years.
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