Feature Film Award

"An ambitious, confident, intelligent and extremely well-acted, début feature which deals honestly and openly with a painful period in recent German history. We also give a very honourable mention to an Italian film by Kim Rossi Stuart, ALONG THE RIDGE (Anche libero va bene), which would have been a worthy winner had we not chosen THE LIVES OF OTHERS." said Jury President Clyde Jeavons.

"The Jury acknowledges the high standard of many of the first features in this year's Festival, and particularly admired Bouli Lanners' Ultranova, Lee Yoon-Ki's This Charming Girl, and Maria Procházková's Shark in the Head. We are unanimous, however, in giving the 10th annual award to the Irish film, Pavee Lackeen, Perry Ogden's skilfully dramatised and deeply committed portrayal of the traveller community in Dublin and its struggle with bureaucracy, poverty and prejudice." said Jury President Clyde Jeavons.

The Woodsman, directed and written by Nicole Kassell, has won the 9th Satyajit Ray Foundation Award for a first feature film pemiered in the UK at the London Film Festival. "We were unanimous," said Clyde Jeavons, who chaired the Foundation's prize jury. "It was an extremely well-crafted film debut by Nicole Kassell, which treats the controversial theme of paedophilia with great insight and sensitivity, thanks not least to Kevin Bacon's fine performance in the leading role."

Nicole Kassell was unable to attend the Film Festival as she is nearly nine months' pregnant. However, the Ray Foundation is hopeful that she may attend the official Award ceremony and screening of the film early next year.

The world of nine-year-old Hodder Jacobsen is a strange place to live. His mother dead he lives alone with his uninterested, night-shift working father. It's a solitary, routine world featuring a daily trip to the bakers for a rum whirl, random and seemingly impertinent questioning of his teacher Miss Asta K and a perplexingly optimistic approach to difficult circumstances. As the established class scapegoat, he finds that relationships with his peers don't come easily but his life develops a sense of purpose when a fairy appears to him and tells him that he has been chosen to save the world. Hodder soon discovers that life as the chosen one isn't nearly as rewarding as he had first thought but he sets about organising an expedition to the African island of Guambilua where his world trip is to begin. Frederik Christian Johansen as Hodder perfectly captures the silent strength but inner despair of the boy who finds reality and fantasy blurring around him in this amusing and offbeat story. Genz deals bravely with the themes of childhood loneliness and loss while also making something uplifting and wonderful that shouldn't be pigeon-holed for younger audiences only.

Justin Johnson - Notes from London Festival Progamme

This first feature by Yamina Bachir-Chouikh is a courageous, violent, provocative and disturbing film about the sickening social and political situation in Algeria during the worst years of terrorism. Rachida (a striking performance from Bahia Rachedi) is a 20 year old teacher in a popular region of Algiers. One morning on her way to work she is surrounded by a group of terrorists who try and force her to take a bomb into the school - she refuses, she is shot and left for dead. Though she recovers, she flees the city to live with her mother ( Rachida Messaouden) herself in self imposed exile since her divorce. Presenting a time in Algeria's history when both fundamentalist and government militias perpetuated crimes against the most vulnerable in the community, and the public felt impotent against the force, this is not easy viewing. Yet the portrayal of courageous women fighting its gratuitous, unjustified self-destructive violence, gives some room for hope

Rose Issa - Notes from London Festival Progamme

Jean-Pierre Sinapi's brittle, funky comedy is without a doubt the most no-nonsense, bracingly bolshy film about disability yet made. It's set in a home for the disabled, where 50-year-old former activist René is the despair of his new young carer Julie. Enraged by life in a wheelchair, René demands the chance to make love again, and Julie finds herself exploring the hard shoulder of the Route Nationale 7 to recruit a likely prostitute. René's exploits soon transform the whole community, including a wheelchair-racing Clash fan and a young gay Muslim with a Johnny Halliday fixation who is attempting an uneasy conversion to Catholicism. Sinapi's film is shot digitally, which at once gives it a crisply no-nonsense docudrama feel. But the mobility of the new camcorder technology also becomes a metaphor for the hard-won mobility of its characters - a militant gesture for a militant film which has more than a touch of Mike Leigh humour about it. Sinapi's film knocks down more than one preconception - not just about disability, but about sexuality, religion and politics too. The crisp sparring between Nadia Kaci and Olivier Gourmet (known for his roles in the Dardenne brothers' Rosetta and The Promise) is just part of the pleasure of this vibrant, provocative piece.

Jonathan Romney   - Notes from London Festival Progamme

While still an infant Thomas Builds-the-Fire's parents were killed in a tragic house fire.  He was rescued by a neighbour, Arnold Joseph, and is brought up by his grandmother to be rather friendly but feeble.  However, he retains a close connection with the son of his rescuer, Victor Joseph, the very antithesis of Thomas. When Victor's estranged father dies in a lonely caravan in Phoenix the two boys make the journey to collect his ashes. Evan Adams

(USA 1998)

Ivan Fila was born in 1956 in Prague, Czechoslovakia. He moved to Germany in 1977 and studied Film and Drama at the Film Academy in Cologne. Since 1983 he has worked as a director, screenwriter and producer, mainly of documentaries or dramatiaed documentaries. Lea is his first feature, it has received many awards, including the Crystal Star for the Best European Film at the 1997 Brussels Film Festival.