Finalists Announced for the 2005 Sundance/NHK International Filmmakers Awards

Every year the Sundance Institute teams up with NHK, the Japan Broadcasting Corporation, to present the Sundance/NHK International Filmmakers Awards. As part of the Institute’s Feature Film Program, these awards represent one of the major ways that the Institute supports the work of innovative international filmmakers. First presented in 1996, the awards are designed to help filmmakers complete a current project or begin a specific new work. Three finalists are chosen from each of four regions of the world—Europe, Latin America, Japan, and the United States. An international jury then selects one winner from each region, and winners are announced at a ceremony during the Sundance Film Festival. This year Walter Salles served as jury president, and other jury members were Antonia Bird, Stephen Gyllenhaal, Carlos Cuaron, Peter Carlton, Toshio Endo, Yoshio Kakeo, Shun’ichi Nagasaki.

The four winners each receive a $10,000 cash award and a guarantee from NHK to purchase the Japanese television broadcast rights when the project is completed. Other support comes in the forms of ongoing creative and strategic advice from Sundance staff through each stage of production up until the films reach audiences worldwide.

“This award is an integral part of the Feature Film Program and provides significant support for international artists,” says Michelle Satter, Director of the Feature Film Program.

“We’re thrilled by the quality and authentic voices of this year’s finalists. Their projects and stories represent a wide range of artistic voices that transcend geographic and political boundaries” says Alesia Weston, Senior Manager, Feature Film Program, International.

Following are profiles of the finalists and descriptions of their projects:

Europe

Swedish director Jens Jonsson studied graphic design and began his career creating comic strips. He has written and directed a number of acclaimed short films, including Brother of Mine, which won the Silver Bear at the 2002 Berlin International Film Festival. The Ping-Pong King, his first feature film, explores the bonds and the limits of brotherhood when a heavyset outcast is forced to rely on his little brother to defend him.

Salvatore Mereu is an Italian filmmaker from Sardinia whose first feature, Ballo a Tre Passi, won the Critic’s Week Award as well as a special mention for best first feature at the Venice International Film Festival. The film went on to screen at festivals around the world, including Sundance. Mereu’s current film, Sonetaula, is a western/love story hybrid about a boy who is torn from his father by false accusations and learns a primitive code from his grandfather that makes him an outlaw.

Romanian filmmaker Catalin Mitulescu has had great success with his short films. Bucurestiwien and 17 Minutes Late were selected for the Cannes Film Festival-Cinefondation in 2001 and 2002 and were distributed theatrically in Romania. Trafic received the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival earlier this year. The Way I Spent the End of the World, his first feature film, is set in a Bucharest suburb during the last year of Ceausescu’s tyrannical rule and tells the story of a seven-year-old boy who saves his people from dictatorship.

Latin America

Alejandro Chomski is an Argentinean filmmaker who worked as an assistant director for Spike Lee, Emir Kusturica, and Jim Jarmusch. His first feature film, Today and Tomorrow, was selected for Un Certain Regard at Cannes in 2003, played at film festivals around the world, and earned Chomski the best director award at the Los Angeles International Latino Film Festival. His current film, Asleep in the Sun, tells the story of a man and wife who become entangled in a conspiracy to traffic bodies and souls.

Rodrigo Moreno is also from Argentina. His first short film, Nosotros, won first prize at the Bilbao Film Festival. In 1998, Comrades, the last episode of Mala Epoca, was named best film at the Mar del Plata and Toulouse Film Festivals. El Descanso, which he directed in 2001, won awards at the Images du Monde in Quebec and the Buenos Aires Film Festival. His present project, The Minder, is about a bodyguard so committed to his profession that he loses his identity and endangers the life he would die to protect.

Mexican director Rodrigo Pía has written and directed five short films, including The Bride, which won the Soleil d’Or for best short film at the Biarritz Festival and the Mayahuel Prize at the Xi Muestra de Cine Mexicano de Guadalajara. Another short, The Eye in the Nape, won the Student Academy Award for best short foreign film and the Ariel from the Mexican Academy of Film and Arts. His debut feature film, The Desert Within, is about a son who exiles himself and his family to a remote desert to atone for his father’s sins.

Japan

Akemi Miyazawa was born and raised in Nagano; her first screenplay, Clear Moment, won the Grand Jury Prize at the Hakodate Illumination Film Festival in 2000. She has made two documentary films: Ren Osugi, a profile of the award-winning actor/director, and Asakusa Rock Za in Brazil, which was selected for the Yamagata Documentary Film Festival. Natural Life, her first feature film, tells the story of an actress who returns home from Tokyo to find her way by nursing her sick father.

Osaka’s Tomofumi Tanaka is a prolific screenwriter, with more than 30 scripts to his credit in the past five years alone. His short films include Sado Diary, Terrorist in 4.5 Jo, and Moon in Night Sky. His most recent short, Flowers in Roots, won the Grand Prix at the Mito Short Film Festival and was one of the winners of Hiroshima’s TTS Short Movie Festival. His feature film debut, A Girl for All Seasons, tells the story of a chubby elementary-school student whose simplicity and innocence empower the people around her.

Mipo Oh is from Mie and has made a number of short films. Eye, her third short, won an award at the PIA Film Festival and screened at festivals around the world, including the American Short Short Film Festival, the Audiovisual Encounters Festival in France, and the Fitzroy Short Festival in Australia. Grandmother won the Grand Prix at the Tokyo International Fantastic Film Festival. Yomoyama Blues, her first feature film, is a humorous and bittersweet portrayal of an ordinary family dealing with everyday challenges.

United States

Sterlin Harjo is a Creek/Seminole filmmaker from Oklahoma who has made two short films, They’re Playing His Song and Goodnight Irene, the latter of which will be shown at the ’05 Festival. He is an alumnus of the Institute’s 2004 Filmmakers Lab and was awarded a Sundance Annenberg Film Fellowship. His first feature film, Four Sheets to the Wind, focuses on a young Native American whose life is turned upside down by his father’s suicide. He leaves the reservation to visit his sister in the city and begins a journey toward a more fulfilling life.

Emily Hubley hails from a famed family of animated filmmakers and has been filming her personal essays and stories since 1980. She provided the animated sequences for John Cameron Mitchell’s Hedwig and the Angry Inch, Judith Helfand and Daniel Gold’s Blue Vinyl, and Christianna Hannum’s Keeping Sound. The Toe Tactic follows a young woman’s search for her wallet through an animated and live-action world haunted by her dead father, populated by flawed individuals, and manipulated by a pack of capricious dogs.

Filmmaker Richard Press has written and directed several short films, including 2÷3, which won a jury prize at the Berlin International Film Festival. Rambles and Expecting both also premiered at Berlin. He is also an artist whose op-art pieces have appeared in the New York Times. He is an alumnus of the 2004 Filmmakers Lab. Virtual Love, his first feature film, is the true story of Paul Monette’s harrowing friendship with Tony Johnson, a charismatic 15-year-old abuse survivor who perhaps never actually existed.