After a week of screenings, my Jury in charge of the Feature Films gives the prizes to Man at Bath (Christophe Honoré) and Madame X (Lucky Kuswandi).
Here are the Statements of the Jury: Man at bath: Man at Bath is a beautiful, daring and provocative look at a seemingly simple situation: The breakup of a gay couple. Director Honoré manages to take us on a tour de force into the days after the end of a love. The films' fragmented style, switching back and forth in genre, form and place is a brilliant analogy for the fractured state of its protagonists. Eventually, Man at Bath is a complex and smart interrogation of what it means to see and what it means to be seen, a film about invisibility and overexposure, a statement on sex and intimacy and how it is so often confused in a gay male subculture.
Madame X: Madame X took us on a truly cinematic adventure into a hilarious utopia between comic style, glamour and trash. Director Lucky Kuswandi tackles the big issues of homophia, transphobia, oppressive political regimes and lets its superhero, a transgender hairdresser in rural Indonesia eventually dance it away. The Jury would like to honour the filmmakers for their courage to tell a difficult story in a funny and empowering way, for their strong political statement and for their social consciousness to bring more peace to the world.
I leave the town with the nicest memory: an encounter with Pyuupiru, the Japanese artist I discovered together with the Tel Aviv TLVFestival Director Yair Hochner at the Asian Hot Shots Film festival in Berlin l last year in a great documentary about her life... beautiful private moments between english and japanese words to exchange about our lives...
