London Film Festival award winners announced

The London Film Festival is over, bringing a season of amazing film-going opportunities to a close. But it also means the festival’s winners have been announced.

The BFI has crowned Imperium as the overall Best Film Award winner. It’s directed by Sergei Loznitsa, and is a three-hour documentary piece about life in the USSR during the early 1970s.

It’s made up of archival footage, and highlights the high levels of ethnic diversity there back in those days.

The Grierson award for documentary film-making, though, went to Concrete Land, directed by Asmahan Bkerat. It’s about a Bedouin family facing the prospect of eviction in Jordan as luxury villas spring up around them.

Filmed over eight years, it’s able to properly represent the passage of time, as well as rising racism and conflict.

The First Feature award goes to 9 Temples to Heaven, from director Sompot Chidgasornpongse. It’s about Sakol and his family, whose one-day trip to nine Buddhist temples is inflected with the knowledge the family’s matriarch figure — who goes along with them — may not be around for much longer.

The jury described it as “visually outstanding, spiritual, and meditative where a story about life and death transcends borders and generations.”

Finally, the short film award went to Aman, from director Rahul Roye. It’s about a trans man whose transition and identity are rocked when he falls pregnant.

“Aman’s finely drawn narrative is made all the more engrossing by the film’s refusal to provide easy answers to the complexities it presents us with,” said the competition jury.

Unfortunately, the only one of these that’s particularly easy to catch yourself right now is Aman. It’s available to stream on the BFI Player until 25th October.

Meanwhile winner Imperium is scheduled for a screening at MoMA on 23rd October. But that’s in New York, not London. It will be the film’s North American premiere.

There are no London screenings on the books that we’ve found.

Similarly, 9 Temples to Heaven is set to be screened as part of the Vermont International Film Festival on 24th October. But that’s a bit of a trek for the London crowd.

Hopefully these accolades will assure some more local screenings before too long, though.

London Film Festival’s “surprise” screening was I Play Rocky, Peter Farrelly’s drama about the making of the original Rocky movie, starring Anthony Ippolito as Sylvester Stallone. It’s going to be much easier to see than most of the outright winners, with cinema screenings beginning on 20th November.

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