Edinburgh International Film Festival 2013 - The Winners

Feature by The News Badger | 28 Jun 2013

This year's Edinburgh International Film Festival awards winners were announced today. The internationally-known EIFF is seen as one of the most forward-thinking and independent-minded festivals on the circuit, and this year's awarded selection offers a glimpse of the talent of a group of filmmakers who may well go on to become well-known household names.

The Award for Best Film in the International Competition went to A World Not Ours, directed by Mahdi Fleifel, a director of Palestinian origin. His film tells the story of a group of Palestinians who have lived in a refugee camp for more than six decades, including members of the director's family. It was previously awarded the Peace Film Prize at this year's Berlin International Film Festival, although Fleifel felt some of his comments to press were taken out of context – read her statement about the controversy over the film here.

It seems the Edinburgh judges (and press) have done a better job; he commented on his win: "I am immensely grateful to the programmers at the EIFF for inviting my film. I have lived, studied and worked in the UK for 13 years, but I've never managed to screen any of my work at a single British film event - not even my short films which were pretty successful internationally. Winning the prize in Britain's No. 1 Film Festival is too good to be true. I hope this will help bring our film to a wider audience in the UK and I would like to thank the jury for this wonderful honour."

The prestigious Michael Powell Award for Best British Feature Film, named after the pioneering English filmmaker, went to Lucien Castaing-Taylor and Véréna Paravel’s Leviathan (read our review here). A visually astounding documentary telling the story of the British deep sea fishing industry. Castaing-Taylor and Paravel commented: “We are totally bowled over by the news of this award. All our films have been rejected by every British film festival to date, so it is all the more moving for us!  We also admire in so many ways the work of this jury, which makes this award especially meaningful to us both. It also gives us the courage and conviction to continue to keep pushing at the envelope – of cinema, of documentary, of art.” 

The award for Best Performance in a British Feature Film went to two young actors, Jamie Blackley and Toby Regbo, whose visceral performances in uwantmetokillhim? were praised for their intensity and accomplishment. Blackley comments: "[To] win this award is a wonderful shock that I wasn’t expecting and I am proud to share it with Toby." Regbo added: "I'm absolutely over the moon. Making this film was so positive: a really interesting story, a great director and a superb actor to work opposite, what more could you want really?" Read our review of the film here.

This year also saw the EIFF's Artistic Director Chris Fujiwara reinstate the Audience Award, which went to Anthony Wonke for his film Fire In The Night, telling the story of the Piper Alpha disaster, which claimed 167 lives in 1988. The anniversary of the disaster made the film all the more poignant, as Wonke commented: "It’s 25 years ago this July that Piper Alpha exploded and sunk into the North Sea and we hope that with this film the memory of that fateful night that affected so many lives will act as a suitable remembrance. I'd like to thank everyone who voted for Fire In The Night, it really does mean an awful lot to everyone involved especially all the men who took part in the film. I know that they will be incredibly touched and thankful that the public engaged with this film and their story in such a positive way."

The Student Critics Award went to Celestial Wives of the Widow Mary, by Alexey Fedorchenko. Other awards went to short films GHL by director Lotte Schreiber and Doll Parts by Muzi Quawson, while filmmaker Josh Gibson was recognised for his outstanding contribution to short film for his role as director and cinematographer on the short film Light Plate.

Gibson commented: "I am honoured and humbled to receive this award and to be recognised along with this small, personal film at such a prestigious international film festival, brimming with work by talented people that I have admired for a long time. Unlike feature films, short films are delicate creatures that owe much to the programming. In shorts programmes the individual films reverberate against one another, sometimes changing fundamentally depending upon the other pieces in the programme." 

The film festival's closing gala takes place on Sunday, with the world premiere of Not Another Happy Ending, a Scottish romantic comedy directed by John McKay, and starring Doctor Who's Karen Gillan.