Edinburgh International Film Festival 2012: Awards

Many people harped on after last year’s festival, saying it had lost its prestige, its glamour, in a sense, its red-carpet exclusivity. While generally true, it shortly became a bit of a broken record, something which Chris Fujiwara is looking to avoid this year as he reintroduces festival awards.

The Michael Powell Award opens up to include documentaries; the International Feature Film Award will select a non-UK film made by an ‘emerging director’; the Shorts awards are split into two for Best British and Best International Film; and the Best Performance in a British Feature Film pretty much speaks for itself. In a sense, the awards do transfer the attention back on the ideas of excellence and critical recognition, though the general arthouse eye-rolling which goes on when Oscars season comes around suggests awards are not always necessary (or liked). At the least, it’ll give audiences and industry types the chance to get dolled up for the closing ceremony. And get smashed, of course.

The Michael Powell Award for Best New British Feature Film

Nominees:

Berberian Sound Studio – Peter Strickland

Day of the Flowers – John Roberts

Flying Blind – Katarzyna Klimkiewicz

Future My Love – Maja Borg

The Imposter – Bart Layton

Life Just Is – Alex Barrett

One Mile Away – Penny Woolcock

Pusher – Luis Prieto

Shadow Dancer – James Marsh

Small Creatures – Martin Wallace

The International Feature Competition

Nominees:

Girimunho – Clarissa Campolina, Helvécio Marins Jr

Here, Then – Mao Mao

It Looks Pretty from a Distance – Anka Sasnal, Wilhelm Sasnal

Kid-Thing – David Zellner

The King of Pigs – Yeon Sang-ho

The Life and Times of Paul the Psychic Octopus – Alexandre O Philippe

The Lifeguard – Maite Alberdi

One.Two.One – Mania Akbari

Papirosen – Gastón Solnicki

The Search for Emak Bakia – Oskar Alegria

Sleepless Night – Jang Kun-jae

Tabu – Miguel Gomes

The Unspeakable Act – Dan Sallitt

A Woman’s Revenge – Rita Azevedo Gomes

The Best British Short Film Competition

Nominees:

All That Glisters – Claire Lamond

Buy Buy Baby – Gervais Merryweather

Coffee – David Smith

Death in a Nut – Tom Chick

Friday – Sebastian Rice-Edwards

Funtimes – Joe Carter

Head Over Heels – Timothy Reckart

I Am Tom Moody – Ainslie Henderson

I’m Fine Thanks – Eamonn O’Neill

The Last Belle – Neil Boyle

The Making of Longbird – Will Anderson

My Face Is in Space – Tom Jobbins

The Pub – Joseph Pierce

Scrubber – Romola Garai

sobbingspittingscratching – Vicky Smith

Tea Party – Vitali Sichinava

Tree of Tule – Arran Gray, Paul Gray

The Best International Short Film Competition

Nominees:

25km2 – Jana Minarikova

38-39 Degrees Celsius – Kangmin Kim

Abiogenesis – Richard Mans

Another game (A quoi tu joues) – Jean Guillaume Sonnier

Barge Dirge – Lindsay McIntyre

Brainy – Daniel Joseph Borgman

Carbon – Craig Webster

The Chair – David Grainger

Curious Light – Charlotte Pryce

Dad, Lenin and Freddy – Rinio Dragasaki

Dinosaur Eggs in the Living Room – Rafael Urban

Europa – Telemach Wiesinger

George Jones and the Giant Sqiud – Vincenzo Perrella, Dan Osborn

God’s Got His Head in the Clouds – Gianluca Sodaro

Heavy Eyes – Siegfried Fruhauf

The Human Factor – Thibault Le Texier

It’s Such a Beautiful Day – Don Hertzfeldt

(k)now (t)here – Jang Hey-Yeun

The Last Bus (Posledný autobus) – Martin Snopek, Ivana Lau?íková

Letter Tape – Rowena Crowe

A Little Suicide – Ana Lily Amirpour

The Maker – Christopher Kezelos

The Metamorphosis – Ki- Nam Yun

Mr and Mrs Gunya – Astrid Bussink

Passage Upon the Plume – Fern Silva

Paul – Adam Bizanski

Pilgrimage – Marc Pelletier

Seven Minutes In The Warsaw Ghetto – Johan Oettinger

Sonny My Older Brother – Tammy Davis

The Thing in the Corner (La Cosa en la Esquina) – Zoe Berriatúa

Vexed – Telcosystems

La Viande + L’amour – Johanna Rubin

The Waves (As Ondas) – Miguel Fonseca

Wild Life – Amanda Forbis, Wendy Tilby