2011 Festival du nouveau cinéma - award winners

The awards for the 40th Festival du nouveau cinéma were presented at tonight's closing night gala screening of Monsieur Lazhar. The winner of the top prize, the Louve d’or, went to Icelandic director Rúnar Rúnarsson’s debut film Volcano. It also won the Association québécoise des critiques de cinéma (Quebec Film Critics Association) Award for Best Feature Film in the International Selection.

An Icelandic film also won the top prize for short films. Magma by Marianna Morkore and Rannvá Káradóttir picked up the Loup argenté for Best short film in the International Selection. Honourable mentions went to La fleur de l’âge by Pascal Plante and Umshini Wam by Harmony Korine.

The Acting Award went to Nadezhda Markina for her work in the Russia film Elena by Andrei Zvyagintsev. Two Montreal directors won for their debut feature films. Anne Émond won the Daniel Langlois Innovation Award for Nuit #1. The Innovation Award is for "a work in the international selection that stands out for its daring aesthetics, creative use of new technologies and/or groundbreaking treatment of a sensitive subject matter." Ivan Grbovic won the Focus Grand Prix for Roméo onze. He receives with his award a $1,500 cash prize and $3,500 in services.

The festival continues for one more day tomorrow, Sunday, October 23.

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Complete list of award winners for the 40th Festival du nouveau cinéma

Louve d’or
Best feature film in the International Selection ($15,000 cash)
Volcano, Rúnar Rúnarsson

Acting Award
Best actor or actress in the International Selection
Nadezhda Markina, Elena

AQCC (Association québécoise des critiques de cinéma) Award
Best feature film in the International Selection
Volcano, Rúnar Rúnarsson
Honourable Mention: Blue Bird, Gust Van den Berghe

Daniel Langlois Innovation Award
Anne Émond, Nuit #1

Focus Grand Prix - Cinémathèque québécoise
Best feature film in the Focus section ($1,500 cash and $3,500 in services)
Ivan Grbovic, Roméo onze

Temps ø People's Choice Award
Notre jour viendra (Our Day Will Come), Romain Gavras
Honourable Mention: The Ballad of Genesis and Lady Jaye, Marie Losier

Loup argenté
Best short film in the International Selection
Magma, Marianna Morkore and Rannvá Káradóttir
Honourable Mentions: La fleur de l’âge, Pascal Plante; and Umshini Wam, Harmony Korine

Grand Prix Focus
Best short film in the International Selection and the Focus section ($5,000 cash from CTV’s Bravo!FACT - Foundation to Assist Canadian Talent)
Sur la ligne, variation No. 2, Mario Calvé and Anne-Marie Turcotte
Honourable Mention: June, Karim Haroun

FNC Lab Innovation Award - Interactive Works/ Web Projects
Awarded to the most innovative work for new platforms: ex aequo (tie)
Bla Bla, Vincent Morisset and
La zone – retour à Tchernobyl, Bruno Masi and Guillaume Herbaut

JURY

International Selection

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  Mario Saint-Amand Mario Saint-Amand made his screen debut in 1989 in Love-Moi, followed by L’Automne Sauvage and Karmina. Janette Bertrand then offered him a television role as a schizophrenic and another a few years later as a dying AIDS patient. 2011 marks Armand’s return to the big screen in two different films: André Forcier’s Coteau Rouge, and Alain Desrochers’ Gerry Toujours Vivant, where he delivers a killer performance as rock idol Gerry Boulet.
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  Éric Fourlanty Éric Fourlanty. a journalist for 25 years and a born movie fan, ran the film section of the Montreal weekly Voir for 15 years and has been involved in many film festivals as a jury member and programmer. He is also an author (La mort en friche, Le violon rouge and Histoire de…) and a critic for the 24 images magazine website.
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  Bernadette Payeur Bernadette Payeur has produced films for Pierre Falardeau, Bernard Émond, Benoit Pilon, Léa Pool, Sébastien Pilote, Michel Langlois, Richard Desjardins, Jean-Claude Coulbois, Serge Giguère and Paul Tana. Her production credits include: Le Party – Octobre – La femme de l’hôtel – La neuvaine – L’Erreur boréale – Elvis Gratton – Le Vendeur – La Déroute – Ce qu’il faut pour vivre – La naissance d’une messe – La femme qui boit – Cap Tourmente – 15 février 1839 – Les artisans du cinéma.
AQCC
•     Jérôme Delgado
  
  Jérôme Delgado is an art and film critic who has a sideline in translation. His articles have appeared regularly for the last four years in the culture section of Le Devoir newspaper as well as in Séquences magazine. In 2010, he took part in the Réflexion + écriture residency at the 3e Impérial, centre d’essai en art actuel in Granby. An art history graduate from Université de Montréal, he has been a member of the Association québécoise de critiques de cinéma since 2004.
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  Julie Demers Holder of a bachelor’s degree in film studies from Université de Montréal, Julie Demers has directed, edited and served as artistic director on a number of short films. She currently works for the Festival International du Film pour Enfants de Montréal (FIFEM), where her activities include developing a film education program for primary school. She has been a regular contributor to Séquences for close to two years, and has an ongoing interest in the representation of the female body.
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  Marie-Claude Mirandette With a background in art history and film studies, Marie Claude Mirandette has worked as a curator of graphic arts at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts and as a freelance art commissioner for a variety of museums. A college teacher since 1999, she has been a contributor to the magazine Ciné-Bulles since 2002 and sits on its editorial board. She is currently the quarterly’s editorial assistant and is also a contributor and member of the editorial board of the magazine Vie des Arts.
Focus
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  Roberto Barrueco Roberto Barrueco is the founder and director of the renowned Mecal International Short Film Festival in Barcelona. He also created the Mecal short film distribution network, which has taken him all over Europe, America and Asia promoting the latest Spanish productions in collaboration with the main national film distribution organizations and the autonomous communities, film festivals and embassies of Spain. This Barcelona-based art historian has also worked in the electronic music scene and created and organized both editions of the Mostra de Cinema del Québec in Barcelona.
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  Gerardo Salcero Gerardo Salcedo studied communication sciences at Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM). In 1983, he worked as a film professor at UNAM and joined the Dirección de Cinematografía staff. Between 1992 and 2006, he was a programmer and deputy director at Cineteca Nacional. In 2007, he co founded the film distribution company MVFilms, as well as working as a programmer for the Acapulco and Chihuahua film festivals and sitting on the pre-selection jury for the Expresión en Corto festival in Guanajuato. In 2010, he became deputy director of the Guadalajara film festival.
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  Edouard Waintrop Born in the Paris region in 1952, Edouard Waintrop led the film club at his high school and university, and is a big fan of the Cinémathèque Française. He worked as a program planner at the Montreuil cinema in the Parisian suburbs before joining the daily Libération in 1982 as a journalist and film critic. His career took a new direction in 2007 when he became director of the Fribourg international film festival in Switzerland. In 2011, he was director of Les cinémas du Grütli in Geneva and artistic director of the Directors’ Fortnight section at Cannes.
Short films
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  Helen Faradji Since moving to Montreal in 1999, Helen Faradji has given free rein to her passion for film. After completing a PhD on the works of the Coen brothers and Quentin Tarantino, she began working as a film critic for CISM (the Université de Montréal student radio station) and local weekly ICI before becoming editor-in-chief for revue24images.com , the webzine for 24 images. She also runs a blog on cinema and has recently ventured onto the airwaves, joining George Privet on Médium large, which airs on Radio-Canada’s Première Chaîne network.
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  Géraldine Gomez A curious spectator and programmer, Geraldine Gomez enjoys breaking down the boundaries between film, visual arts and new technologies. She has been a programmer at the Centre Pompidou since 2002. In 2005, she came up with Hors Pistes, a roundabout exploration of fiction. This multidisciplinary program focuses on new trends in contemporary images through screenings and events with subjects as wide-ranging as contemporary art, film, photography, architecture, science, gastronomy and sports.
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  Michal Procházka Michal Procházka is a Czech film critic, festival programmer, organizer and writer focusing on European, French-language and Korean art house cinema. He has co-written books on two outstanding figures of modern world cinema, Béla Tarr (In the Eye of Whale) and Aki Kaurismäki (Aki Kaurismäki - Lights of Shadows). He contributes regularly to major Czech media. Procházka runs a short film coproduction project, Visegrad Exchange Forum, at the AniFest festival and works for MAUR FILM, an animation production company.
FNC Lab
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  Mélissa Mongiat Artist/designer Mélissa Mongiat holds an MA in Creative Practice for Narrative Environments from Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design in London. She is the co-founder of a studio that looks for new ways to interact and tell stories (livingwithourtime.com ). Ranging in scale from city-wide to palm-sized, her projects include 21 Balançoires, a collective instrument consisting of 21 musical swings set up in the Quartier des spectacles, and Bloc Jam, a giant interactive projection created for MUTEK and Nuit blanche.
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  Jena-Claude Guédon Jean-Claude Guédon holds a Ph.D. in the history of science and is a professor of comparative literature. He has been associated with the Internet Society since the early ’90s. In 1996, he published La planète cyber. L’Internet et le cyberespace in Gallimard’s “Découvertes” collection. Considered one of the pioneers of scholarly electronic publishing in Canada, he is one of the 16 signatories to the Budapest Open Access Initiative advocating free access to academic research articles. He is also a founding member of the Association francophone des utilisateurs de logiciels libres (AFUL).
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  Céline Baril Filmmaker and documentary maker Céline Baril produced and directed her first film, Barcelone (an experimental work shot on Super 8 mm), in 1989. In 1996, she used a number of photo albums she picked up at Les Puces de Paris flea market to create L’absent. In 2003, after spending an entire year at a high school in a disadvantaged neighbourhood in Montreal, she created 538 fois la vie, produced by the NFB. This was followed by La théorie du tout in 2009, a documentary that moves between people and landscapes, words and places.
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  Roman Ikonicoff Doctor in philosophy and history of science (PhD) and engineer, Roman Ikonicoff was in the 1990’s journalist in french science magazine Science & Vie, editor of the Multimedia section. Specialist in computing, artificial intelligence, cognitive sciences, mathematics and physics, he is today an independent journalist, regular co-worker of Science & Vie and chief editor of special issue of Ciel & Espace magazine (astronomy). At the same time, he develops a research activity in history and philosophy of sciences, centred on the foundations of calculability theory and algorithmics.