International Competition Jury Special Award went to Children of the Mist

International Competition Jury

The International Competition Jury selected the films to receive the International Competition Jury Award for the Best Film, the International Competition Jury Award for the Best Director, and the International Competition Jury Special Award. They had ten films to choose from, all of which stand out because of their original style and act as testimonies about the condition of human rights. 

The International Competition Jury members were Shanida Scotland, who is the head of Doc Society Film, the film critic and cultural journalist Pavel Sladký, and Belarus director Aliaksei Paluyan, whose film Courage opened last year’s One World Festival.  

This year, the jury also selected a film to receive the International Competition Jury Special Award. This award went to Vietnamese director Diễm Hà Lệ for her film Children of the Mist. Particularly the director’s approach to her protagonists – a family and their fourteen-year-old daughter in a remote Vietnamese village – captured the jury’s interest. In their reasoning, the jury added:

“Bridging cinema verité and her own personal engagement with the family, the director manages to strike a balance between being in the situation with complex people and moral directorial choices made in the moment. Children of the Mist is a strong immersive story about Hmong culture that becomes a beautifully crafted character study. For this reason, we wanted to highlight the film with a special mention jury award.”