Partition and Imago lead the winners for this year’s Montreal International Documentary Festival (RIDM). The festival announced the award winners over its final weekend as the festival wrapped its 28th edition. Directed by Diana Allan, Partition reassembles photographs and documentary footage from the period of the British occupation in Palestine. The jury called it “a film that delves into the complexities of the archives from the colonial past, to engage with the present.”
Meanwhile, the French/Belgian co-production Imago won the Grand Prize for International Feature. The doc, which won the equivalent honour at DOC NYC last week, sees filmmaker Déni Oumar Pitsaev return home to Georgia after inheriting a piece of land. The jury praised it for “impressive, masterful and lyrical imagery.”
The RIDM winners included Special Jury Prizes for both the National and International Competitions. Those honours went to Kindergarten, directed by Jean-François Caissy, and the Italian Waking Hours, directed by Federico Cammarata and Filippo Foscarini, respectively. Caissy’s tender observation of childhood was among the Quebecois docs having its world premiere at RIDM.
Meanwhile, the Magnus Isacsson Award for social impact filmmaking went to Spare My Bones, Coyote! by Jonah Malek, while Nadia Louis-Desmarchais’ Recomposée received a special mention in the competition. It also won the Student Jury Award.
For short and medium-length docs, the national prize went to Lloyd Wong, Unfinished, directed by Lesley Loksi Chan and Lloyd Wong, while the international prize was awarded to Marratein, Marratein directed by Julia Yezbick. A special mention for the national competition went to Nada El-Omari’s Momentum.
Two Canadian films were also honoured with special jury prizes. Adèle Schneider’s Histoires d’anxiétés won the Soirée de la Relève Radio-Canada Award, while Andrés Livov’s The Blueberry Blues won the Women Inmate Jury Award. The Blueberry Blues served as this year’s closing night selection for RIDM.
