Following on from Four Corners’ best film win at the Niagara Film Festival in Canada last month, the South African thriller continued its award-winning streak, taking second place for the Best Film Gryphon youth jury award at the Giffoni Film Festival in Italy on Sunday night.
Director Ian Gabriel’s film was the only South African picture selected to screen at the Italian festival, and was praised for “outstanding direction, cinematography, performances and music that gave a strong sense of the world of the film”.
Four Corners was featured in the generator 18 category, in which the the Best Film Gryphon was won by Korea’s Joon ik Lee’s true story, Hope.
Giffoni is the largest youth-orientated cinematic event in the world and allows young audience members to act as the jury and vote for winning films.
This year was a star-studded event at which Meryl Streep was awarded a Giffoni fellowship award. Other attendees of the festival included Alan Rickman, Dylan O’Brian and guest star Richard Gere, who hailed the festival as having “worldwide importance”.
Gabriel said: “International cinema allows you to see the world from a richer and broader perspective than the typical American and Hollywood films the youth have traditionally been exposed to.
“In this way, encouraging the next generation’s interest in these stories allows the broadening of global youth culture and I’m convinced that any good change we hope to see in the world will only come about through the actions of today and tomorrow’s youth.
“By voting for a film from the Cape Flats at an international festival, this youth jury has proven that today’s young people want the windows of the world, no matter how distant, opened to them.” – Sapa