Murtada Elfadl described<\/a> the \u201cspellbinding non-fiction\u201d as a \u201cdevastating study of love and loss,\u201d noting that the film \u201cplays like a thriller but manages to deliver honest and piercing emotions at almost every sequence along the way.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\tThe Polish filmmaker\u2019s previous documentary feature, \u201cAll These Sleepless Nights,\u201d premiered in Park City in 2016, picking up the directing prize in the World Cinema Documentary Competition.<\/p>\n
\n\tThe Silver Alexander in the International Competition went to debut directing duo\u00a0Janay Boulos and Abd Alkader Habak for \u201cBirds of War,\u201d which scooped four prizes on the afternoon. The film, which premiered in the\u00a0World Cinema Documentary Competition at Sundance, tells the love story of London-based Lebanese journalist Boulos and Syrian-based activist\/cameraman Habak, delving into their personal archive across 13 years of revolutions, war and exile.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\n\tSpecial Jury Prizes in the category were also awarded to\u00a0Jukka K\u00e4rkk\u00e4inen, for \u201cThe Beauty of Errors,\u201d and Yulia Lokshina\u2019s \u201cAround Paradise.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\tThe Golden Alexander in the Newcomers competition, featuring debut and sophomore films from up-and-coming directors, went to Mary Bouli for \u201cAt No Cost,\u201d a documentary about a young Athenian woman with dreams of becoming a ballet dancer who decides to become an egg donor to make ends meet.\u00a0The Silver Alexander went to\u00a0Chouwa Liang\u00a0for \u201cReplica,\u201d about the\u00a0growing\u00a0number of young women in China who are choosing partners generated on demand by AI programs.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\n\tThe Newcomers jury\u00a0included documentary filmmaker Melody Gilbert, filmmaker and editor Farahnaz Sharifi and documentary filmmaker Chryssa Tzelepi.<\/p>\n
\n\tIn the Film Forward competition, which \u201cchallenges cinematic conventions and showcases unconventional films,\u201d\u00a0the\u00a0Golden Alexander went to \u201cDear Future,\u201d by\u00a0Christiana Cheiranagnostaki, which is described as a documentary exploring \u201ca liminal space between what\u2019s lost and what\u2019s yet to come.\u201d The Silver Alexander went to Carlos Mora Fuentes and Anna Berkhof for \u201cLevel,\u201d a film about landscapes that are being irrevocably altered due to climate change.<\/p>\n
\n\tThe jury consisted of programmer and visual artist Aikaterini Gegisian, architect and cultural programmer Sandra Pires and programmer and ECAM Forum coordinator Alberto Valverde.<\/p>\n
\n\tIn the\u00a0Immersive: All Around Cinema competition, the Golden Alexander went to \u201cAnother Place,\u201d by Domenico Singha Pedroli.<\/p>\n
\n\tThe\u00a028th Thessaloniki Documentary Festival<\/a>, which runs March 5 \u2013\u00a015, closes with a special screening of Academy Award nominee \u201cMr. Nobody Against Putin,\u201d followed by a live broadcast of the Oscars from the Dolby Theatre.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Polish filmmaker Micha\u0142 Marczak\u2019s \u201cClosure,\u201d which follows a father\u2019s obsessive search for his vanished son and its devastating…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":348216,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[2472,93,61,60,270,155945],"class_list":["post-348215","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-movies","tag-documentaries-to-watch","tag-entertainment","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-movies","tag-thessaloniki-documentary-festival"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/348215","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=348215"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/348215\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/348216"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=348215"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=348215"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=348215"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}