The pick of the flicks from Gimli film festival

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This article was published 11/08/2023 (811 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

A week after it wrapped up, the Gimli International Film Festival announced its latest slate of award winners, highlighting work the judges felt stood above the rest.

Best Manitoban actor honours were split between a pair of performers who owned the screen in their respective projects. Yulia Guzhva, originally from Ukraine, was rewarded for her leading turn in director Deco Dawson’s sprawling, multi-lingual Diaspora, while Zorya Arrow, a multi-disciplinary artist based in Winnipeg, was recognized for playing Billie, the main character in the aquatic mystery Arutinae.

Erin Buelow, a first-time feature film director, was named best Manitoban director for his work on Arutinae.

Before the Sun, director Banchi Hanuse’s documentary feature about the risks and rewards of bareback horse riding, centred on a young Siksika woman named Logan Red Crow received the Indigenous Spirit Award, the New Voices Award, and the Best of Fest Audience Choice prize.

The Grand Jury Prize, the festival’s highest honour, went to director Lin Alluna’s Twice Colonized, a documentary about Greenlandic Inuit lawyer Aaju Peter and the ongoing struggle for post-colonial justice in Canada and Denmark.

Winnipeg-based director Cecilia Araneda received the Barry Lank Memorial Award, named for the Winnipeg-born director and producer, for her documentary Unarchive. The award is given to filmmakers who “show exemplary work in the social awareness/social justice film genre” through the medium of documentary film. Unarchive tells twin narratives about Araneda’s father’s life and the political history of his birthplace of Chile over the past century.

Director Farrah Murdock, who won the $10,000 RBC Pitch competition at the festival, received the Winnipeg Indigenous Filmmakers Collective short jury prize for her film, Unless You Have Been There.

For Please Handle With Care, a short documentary short about balikbayan boxes, Winnipeg director Angeline Javier won the Manitoba short jury prize. I Would Like to Thank My Body by director Catherine Dulude, who also participated in the pitch competition, received the audience choice award for Manitoba short.

Vienna-based Ukrainian director Alexandra Dzhiganskaya’s Under the Endless Sky, centred on the filmmaker’s childhood memories in what is now a war-torn country, was named the best international short film.

ben.waldman@winnipegfreepress.com