Festival internacional Signos da Noite - Lisboa |
International Festival Signs of the Night - Lisbon |
|
|
|
|
|
7° Festival internacional Signos da Noite - Lisboa - December 26-31, 2021
19th International Festival Signs of the Night - Portugal
ONLINE EDITION
9 |
|
A Loss of Something Ever Felt
|
|
Carlos Eduardo Lesmes Lopez |
Estonia, Colombia, Sweden / 2020 | 1:22:00 |
A woman travels from Estonia to Colombia to look for her drug-addicted and alcoholic half-brother. Six months have passed since Lauri, a drug addict living in Colombia, called his mother Hille back home in Estonia, asking for money. After phoning embassies and police departments without an address or ID to go on, she hits a dead end. Desperate, she asks her daughter Eeva to fly to Bogotá and look for him. Bewildered as to how to search a city of 9 million, she reluctantly sets off. She was Lauri’s closest confidant when they were children, but a decade of his tumultuous addiction drove them half a world apart. Walking the streets he might have slept on, seeing the dangers he must have faced, she begins to know her brother again. But as sightings crop up through a network of outreach volunteers, Eeva soon fears what she might find. Lurching between hope and panic, her journey takes an unexpected turn that transforms this compelling chase into an unforgettable mission of the heart.
|
|
|
JURY DECLARATION:
For its engaging focus in the search for a missing drug addict, for its’ humanity and refusal to shirk from conveying the vulnerability of both the lost and the living, the Main Award for the Documentary Competition is given to A Loss of Something Ever Felt by Carlos Eduardo Lesmes.
|
|
SIGNS AWARD
The Signs Award for Documentary honours films, which express in an original, convincing and sensitive way
the perturbing aspects of reality
|
Year of the Robot |
gL’année du robot |
Yves Gellie |
Belgium, France / 2019 / 0:31:25 |
At the intersection of art and science, L’année du robot (Year of the robot) depicts the human being and the robot as its artificial counterpart. As a series of archival documents detailing the first contacts and dialogue between a robot gifted with an artificially created autonomy and human beings, it studies cognitive dissonance, a minute, mysterious relational space sitting between the two actors. It involves elderly people sometimes afflicted with Alzheimer's or dementia, or young adults with autism or neurological problems. Once past the surprise phase and aware of the artificial nature of the robot's functioning, the residents try, despite everything, to forge bonds with it.
|
|
|
JURY DECLARATION:
For his meticulous and delicate rendering of what can be called groundbreaking scenarios in the interface between humans and robots, the Signes Award goes to confusingly enthralling "Year of the Robot" by Yves Gellie.
|
|
NIGHT AWARD
The Night Award for Documentary honours films, which represent reality
in an ambivalent and enigmatic way, avoiding stereotypes of
representation and simple conclusions
|
|
|
Ekain Irigoien |
Spain / 2020 / 1:10:22 |
Javier and Romerales sleep under one of the many cornices around the touristic Plaza de la Opera in Madrid. There, their friendship becomes a hymn to life, death and dignity.
|
|
|
JURY DECLARATION:
An exceedingly well shot documentary that provides an inside view on the homeless’ surviving in the city center, sharing very different moments of their lives and thereby offering us in a heartfelt way the possibility to overcoming stereotypes.
|
|
EDWARD SNOWDEN AWARD
The Edward Snowden Award honors films, which offer sensitive (mostly) unknown information, facts and phenomenons of eminent importance, for which the festival wishes a wide proliferation in the future
|
|
|
Lubomir Dankov |
Bulgaria / 2019 / 1:00:00 |
This is a movie about the Donbass war, first-person stories. You will hear the stories of so-called "ordinary people". These people suffered from irrational from a military point of view strikes on civilian targets. They are victims of someone's desire to wage war on their territory at all costs. There are no author's comments in this movie and no censoring of the thoughts of the local people. This film was made especially for spectators in Europe, who do not know what is happening in Eastern Ukraine. The purpose of the film is to arouse interest in the ongoing six-year armed conflict and to make people to start to think about the responsibility of each of us for peace in Europe.
|
|
|
JURY DECLARATION:
For providing a captivating voice to the victims of a war and its aftermath, a platform for those who never wanted it and have never been responsible for it, the Edward Snowden Award is given to The Donbass Children with the hope that the cries of the survivors will reach the conscience of the warmakers.
|
|
DIRECTOR STATEMENT:
The Edward Snowden Award is a great honor for our small team. The "democratic world" knows almost nothing about the war in Ukraine, in which many civilians were killed, as well as people with weapons who were forced to fight against their will. People in the EU and the US have received and continue to receive a picture distorted by the mainstream media, that has nothing to do with the truth. You know, there is a very old wisdom - The first casualty of war is truth. In our film you can see a piece of this truth - maybe not a very big piece, but in our opinion - a very important piece of truth. We are grateful to all the festivals that help our film reach people. At the moment we have no other options for this.
|
|
JURY AWARD
FOR COMPELLING VISUAL EXPRESSION
|
|
|
Victor Orozco Ramirez |
Germany / 2020 / 0:12:00 |
Several years ago, I immigrated to Germany. Here, I live in a small old house, which urgently needs modernization and that only theoretically protects me from wind, rain and cold.
|
|
|
|
|
|