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Sydney Film Festival Winners Announced
With festivities over for another year, The Sydney Film Festival announced the winners for 2010
With a prize of $60,000, Jury President Jan Chapman announced French Canadian actor/director Xavier Dolan's Heartbeats as the winner of the 2010 Sydney Film Prize at the Festival's closing night gala.
Chapman said that the jury found Dolan's examination of wilful delusion and rejection to be a "boldly truthful and compassionate observation of one of the great crippling foibles of human nature - the hopeless crush."
Chapman also gave an honourable mention to Alexei Popogrebsky's psychological thriller How I Ended This Summer and the Australian film directed by first-timer Ben C. Lucas, Wasted on the Young, which exposes the anxieties that can push young people to the edge.
The judging panel included Chapman, Hong Kong Director Yonfan (Prince of Tears), Australian Director Shirley Barrett (South Solitary, Love Serenade), Sundance Film Festival Director John Cooper, and British Director Lucy Walker (Waste Land).
The 2010 FOXTEL Australian Documentary prize of $10,000 was awarded to The Snowman, directed by Juliet Lamont and produced by Rachel Landers and Dylan Blowen. The film focuses on the director and her family coming to terms with the loss of their father to mental illness, detailing the human spirit in the face of tragedy.
Also announced on the closing night were the 2010 Dendy Short Film Awards. Taking home the 2010 Community Relations Commission Award (CRC) for multiculturalism was Bad Language directed by Viron Papadopoulos. The Dendy Award for Best Live Action Short was given to Ashlee Page's The Kiss.
The Rouben Mamoulian Award for Best Director went to Deeper Than Yesterday, directed by Ariel Kleiman and the winner of the Yoram Gross Animation Award went to The Lost Thing, directed by Shaun Tan and Andrew Ruhemann.
Picture captio: The cast of Heartbeats (L-R) Xavier Dolan, Monia Chokri, Niels Schneider at the Cannes Film Festival 2010, courtesy of Getty Images. Taken by Sean Gallup.