Martinique International Film Festival
2016 Fall Edition

Best Narrative Feature Film & Martinique Snake Award: Ursa Minor (Greece) by Elissavet Chronopoulou. In a cheap by-the-hour hotel, a man is being arrested while a woman, unconscious, is being transported to the hospital. On his way to the police station, in the patrol car, the man is recalling the last few months, from the day he first met the woman until the dramatic end of their relationship, a few minutes ago. In the meantime the effort of two people to love each other. 

Best Documentary Feature Film: Free (Croatia) by Tomislav Zaja. Free follows the path to freedom of a group of people with intellectual disabilities that are locked away in Croatian institutions. The only things that Ivan, Enes, Tina, Kruno, Mirko, Tomo have in common is that they are outcasts of society and they dream of freedom: we see them institutionalised and we watch what it's like to be isolated, deprived of privacy and of one's rights to make decisions regarding their own life. One day they are informed that they will be released. After decades spent in institutions, a new beginning awaits them: Ivan has always wanted to be a police officer, Enes buys a video camera and starts to document his everyday life, Tina and Kruno want to get married, Mirko and Tomo dream of becoming football coaches at their favourite local club, Silvia starts singing in the church choir, Andjelko is trying to find a girl and a job... The camera observes them, capturing their perspective on the biggest change of their lives while they try to fulfil their long-postponed dreams. It is a good opportunity for all of us, those who never had anything to do with these institutions, to start reflecting on our own lives, our freedoms, and the things we take for granted in our societies. 

Best Narrative Short Film: An Angry Man (Denmark) by Jannik Dahl Pedersen. A self-help tape leads the spineless Lars out on a road trip with his father. Their relationship has always been strained, and it does not get better as they are confronted with both strong women, a self-proclaimed guru and their repressed past along the way. The tape leads Lars astray, but how does one take the wheel on life's inscrutable roads when you're usually the one being run over? 

Best Documentary Short Film: In Memory of The Chinatown (Taiwan) by Chun-Tien Chen. May a building have its own reincarnation? Once upon a time, there's a region of canal's dockyard in the center of Tainan city in Taiwan. Later in 1970s, the canal gradually lost its function and the large residential and commercial mixed mall 'Chinatown' had been built at the site. Chinatown was once the most prosperous mall in the city, however, by more than three decades of rise and fall, the city's authority planned to demolish the building for urban renewal plan. The Chinatown makes no exception of those failing shopping malls all around this island. As for those residents who have lived in the Chinatown for a long time experience most of the death and life of the city. 

Best Animated Short Film: Schirkoa (India) by Ishan Shukla. In the city of bag-heads, a senate member faces a tough choice between political career, brothels and love for a mysterious woman. A choice that will transform his life and the city in unimaginable ways. 

Best Experimental Film: Back Track (Austria) by Virgil Widrich. A 7-minute 3D-remix of feature films from the 1950s and 60s which were projected on glass and rephotographed in stereoscopic 3D with a photo camera. 

Best Carribean Film: Caribbean Fantasy (Dominican Republic) by Johanne Gomez Terrero. In the riverside slums of the Ozama River in Santo Domingo, the boatman Ruddy is taken care by his girlfriend Altagracia, who debates between him and her husband, in a story of love between people who have somatized the condition of the space they inhabit. 

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