Oliver Laxe’s ‘Fire Will Come’ Wins Best Film at Thessaloniki Film Festival
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Oliver Laxe’s “Fire Will Come” won the top prize, the Golden Alexander, at the 60th Thessaloniki Intl. Film Festival on Sunday, as well as the best actor award for Amador Arias, playing an arsonist who returns to his family home in the mountains.
The film, described in its Variety review as “a rustically beautiful rural parable,” played in Cannes’ Un Certain Regard sidebar — where it won the runner-up Jury Prize.
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The Special Jury Award, the Silver Alexander, went to Maya Da-Rin’s “The Fever,” which world premiered at Locarno Film Festival. The film explores the complex and tense relationship between indigenous communities in Brazil and Western civilization.
The special jury award for best director, the Bronze Alexander, went to Melina Leon for “Song Without a Name,” which dramatizes a true-life case of Peruvian baby trafficking. The film played in Directors’ Fortnight in Cannes.
Greta Fernandez took the best actress award for Belén Funes’s “A Thief’s Daughter,” which premiered in San Sebastian, where Fernandez shared best actress honors with Nina Hoss. Fernandez plays a hard-working young mother, Sara, who wants to give a home to her young brother, who is in an orphanage. Her father, the “thief,” proves to be an obstacle to her plans.
The international jury was comprised of Rugilė Barzdžiukaitė, a film director from Lithuania, Jacqui Davies, a British producer, Ariane Labed, a Greek-French actress, Angeliki Papoulia, a Greek actress, and Germany’s Wieland Speck, a filmmaker, author and curator.
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