Lee Chang-dong's "Possible Love" Takes Top Fiction Prize at Montclair Film Festival
Lee Chang-dong's Possible Love won top honours in the fiction feature competition at the Montclair Film Festival, according to the full list of winners published by Variety on October 26.
The 15th annual festival ran from October 16 to 25 in Montclair, New Jersey. It opened on October 16 with Martin McDonagh's Wild Horse Nine at the Wellmont Theater, a film starring John Malkovich, Sam Rockwell, Steve Buscemi and Parker Posey. The opening film went on to win the audience award for fiction feature, which is voted by people in the seats rather than picked by a jury.
The documentary prizes went to a varied slate. Pegah Ahangarani's Rehearsals for a Revolution won the Bruce Sinofsky Award in the documentary feature competition. Itab Azzam and Jack MacInnes' One in a Million received the special jury prize. Juliane Dressner and Miriam Shor's My NDA took the audience award for documentary feature.
Other audience prizes went to Ryusuke Hamaguchi's All of a Sudden, which won best of world cinema, and Steven Leckart's An Unknown Substance, named best short film. A special jury prize for excellence in cinematography went to Senzo Ueno for his work on Hirokazu Kore-eda's Look Back.
Newer filmmakers had their own paths to the stage. Stephanie Ahn's Bedford Park and William D. Caballero's TheyDream shared the Future/Now competition and the $5,000 Mark Urman award. Kelly O'Sullivan and Alex Thompson's Mouse won the Junior Jury prize, which is decided by a panel of young viewers.
The shorts competitions produced three winners: K. Xian Ming Yu's I See You in the Flood, Mars Verrone's Buckskin and Jeannette Louie's Us Being Epic.
For a festival, the list tells a useful story. Prizes are handed out by juries, by audiences and by a junior panel, so a single film can win in one category and be overlooked in another. Festival prizes do not set box-office results, but they do give filmmakers and distributors something to point to when they look for their next screening, sale or release date.
The festival was presented by Volvo Car USA, and its complete program had been announced earlier in the year. The awards close a festival that puts new independent work in front of local audiences for ten days each autumn.
