Shower of prizes for FFC films at national film awards in Slovakia and Estonia
The Slovak-Czech-Macedonian folk-mystery drama THE BALLAD OF PIARGY cleared a total of eleven prizes, including the Audience Award, at the Slovakian "Sun in a Net" Film Awards on April 15. The prestigious awards are named after Štefan Uher's 1963 cult film, one of the most important harbingers of Czechoslovakia's eventual opening toward "socialism with a human face."
THE BALLAD OF PIARGY was pitched back in 2011 under the title PIARGY at connecting cottbus, the co-production market of FilmFestival Cottbus, and was completed in 2022, directed by Ivo Trajkov. The film screened in the FFC spectrum last year, as did Michal Blaško's VICTIM. The film, about a right-wing populist party that exploits the alleged assault of a Slovak boy by three Roma youths for its nationalist propaganda, won the Sun in A Net awards for Best Film and Best Director. Tereza Nvotová's folkloric-feminist fantasy flick THE NIGHT SIREN won Best Music, and Attila Mokos was named Best Supporting Actor in the provincial comedy GOOLDILOCKS AND THE GLORIOUS LOSERS. These two films also screened at the FFC last year.
A few days later, the Estonian Film and Television Awards were presented in Tallinn.
The winner here was Ove Musting's "Kalev," about the emotional ups and downs of an Estonian basketball club dealing with the question of whether to participate in the national championships now, during the dissolution of the Soviet Union - when all signs point to victory, but clubs from neighboring Baltic republics are already boycotting the Soviet League to bolster the call for their countries' independence.
Elomo Nüganen's MELCHIOR THE APOTHECARY trilogy, which ran in the FFC's HITS section in 2022, won three awards, with the Best Film Actress prize going to Maarja Johanna Mägi, the Best Production Design prize and Best Make-Up.