'The Act of Killing' wins the Barcelona International Documentary Film Festival's main award

Barcelona (ACN).- The 16^th edition of the DocsBarcelona – the Catalan capital’s International Documentary Film Festival – awarded Joshua Oppenheimer’s ‘The Act of Killing’ the prize for best movie for its work picturing Anwar Congo’s death squads in Indonesia. Catalan Eva Vila’s ‘Bajarí’ received the jury’s special mention. The festival, which ran in the Catalan capital from Wednesday to Sunday, increased audience figures by 40% compared to last year. The Director of the documentary film festival, Joan Gonzàlez, told ACN that the organisation was very pleased as “the increase in audience figures has been spectacular and extraordinary”. The festival organisation thinks that one of the reasons for such an increase is the fact of having moved the event from winter to spring. Furthermore, the improvement in the festival’s communication and image management as well as the higher number of movies shown and sessions held could also be behind the positive 2013 figures.

In 2012, around 3,500 spectators attended the DocsBarcelona film projections while this year, more than 5,000 people enjoyed the Catalan capital’s international documentary film festival. The event’s organisation team was very pleased with “how citizens have responded to moving DocsBarcelona from winter to spring”. “We are very happy” stated the festival’s Director, Joan González. “We wanted to grow, we took a decision and people have followed us and we have increased our figures, with a very significant growth”, added González.

‘The Act of Killing’, by Joshua Oppenheimer, received the award for best movie, which comes with a €5,000 prize and a small trophy. Oppenheimer worked for more than a decade in Indonesia, filming the militia and the death squads led by Anwar Congo. The filmmaker had the objective of exploring the relationship between political violence and people’s common imaginary world. “It is an excellent movie, which directly deals with human rights and how genocide situations have taken place and which portrays people in a way they have never been filmed in before”, explained González. In fact, the festival’s jury recognised the touching strength of ‘The Act of Killing”, which has already won other awards in previous festivals. The DocsBarcelona’s jury emphasised “the [movie’s] differentiated style, by which it denounces an issue that unfortunately is still very present: torture and assassination in a totalitarian regime”.

‘Bajarí’ received a special mention

Within the festival’s official section, the jury also paid tribute to the Catalan production ‘Bajarí’, directed by Eva Vila, picturing Roma people in Barcelona and their attachment to Flamenco dance. The jury awarded Vila’s film a special mention “for vindicating the interracial Barcelona, for the beauty of its images and for the great discovery of Karime Amaya and Mercedes Amaya known as La Winnye”.

The New Talent award was unanimously given to the Chilean production ‘El Salvavidas’ (which translates in English as ‘The Lifejacket’), the opera prima of the film director Maite Alberdi. The jury praised “her distant and minimalist approximation of everyday life on a Chilean beach and the portrayal of its main characters”.

The vote of the teenage audience, present in the section ‘Kids & Teens’, gave the Teens and Docs Award to the Catalan production ‘En un xip multicolour. La vida de Neil Harbisson’, directed by Roger Soldevila, Isaac Martínez and Josep Parés (which translates in English as ‘In a multicolour chip. The life of Neil Harbisson’). The film tells the peculiar story of Neil Harbisson, a teenager who suffers from achromatism, which means he can only see in black and white.

The most viewed documentaries

Besides the opening and closing movies, and some films shown at the sessions for kids and teenagers, the movies shown at the 2013 DocsBarcelona festival with the highest number of spectators have been: ‘Bajarí’, ‘Whore’s Glory’, ‘The Act of Killing’, ‘Google, the World’s Brain’ and ‘Con mi corazón en Yambo’.