This year’s international competition jury consisted of four specialists – Nobuaki Doi (Japan), Florian Keller (Switzerland), Biljana Labovic (USA) and Solweig von Kleist (Germany), who evaluated 37 films from all over the world. The International Jury has given six awards. The first award for the New Talent, given to the best student film or debut, went to Tomek Popakul for his graduation film „Ziegenort”. Popakul has graduated from the Film School in Łódź while his film was produced by the animation studio NoLabel from Krakow. The second award went to Tomek Ducki, who made his debut at Fantoche with his latest film “Baths”. The jury has awarded him for the exceptional and new visual style and has given him the Best Visual award. “Baths” was produced by the Studio Miniatur Filmowych from Warsaw and co-produced by the English Peek and Boo. It’s worth mentioning, that the last year Best Visual award went to Paweł Prewencki for his 8-minute long “What Happens When Children Don’t Eat Soup”. The competition’s Grand Prix has been given to Theodor Ushev for his newest film “Gloria Victoria” while Michael Frei and his film “Plug and play” – screened in May at the Krakow Film Festival – won the Swiss competition.
Two other Polish films were shown in the competition section – Zbigniew Czapla’s „Toto” and Wojciech Wojtkowski’s „Ex animo”.
„Baths” is a story of two old female swimmers, who meet at the public bath to take part in a ritual swimming together. This time however they go deeper than usual. On delivering the verdict the Jury of Fantoche stated the following: “Baths” takes us into the murky waters of fantasy. With a cool kind of magic, this delicately stylized film draws us into various layers of reality, as we plunge from silent melancholia into the graphic frenzy of competitive sports, where everything is turned upside down. The notion of the flipside of reality is taken literally here, to mesmerizing effect“. This is the newest film by Tomek Ducki, who introduced himself to the festival audience with the six years earlier film „Life line”, which among many others has also brought him the Golden Dove award at the festival in Leipzig in 2007.
„Ziegenort” by Tomek Popakul is one of the most popular films this year. Since its’ premiere at the festival in Rotterdam it has already screened at more than 20 festivals and has been awarded multiple times. The New Talent award at Fantoche festival is the seventh award for Tomek Popakul. “Ziegenort” is a small village at the coast, where a busy father is trying to teach his teenage son to work as a fisherman. The introvert fish-boy will have to face the first serious competition. The world this boy discovers is full of unsettling signs, striking observations, which on multiple occasions scare him. An intriguing, graphic animation by Popakul is an attempt to show the fears of a teenager starting his adult life.
To read more about the festival, visit the official website