Tel Aviv documentary festival announces film winners

The Docaviv film festival ran from May 19-28.

By HANNAH BROWN
Updated: MAY 26, 2016 14:00
Still from Karolina Bielawska’s film 'Call Me Marianna' (photo credit: Courtesy)
Still from Karolina Bielawska’s film 'Call Me Marianna'
(photo credit: Courtesy)
The winners of Docaviv, the Tel Aviv International Documentary Festival, were announced on Wednesday night. The film festival ran from May 19-28.
The winner of the international competition was Karolina Bielawska’s Call Me Marianna, about a Polish woman suing her parents to allow her to undergo gender reassignment surgery. An honorable mention went to Jerzy Sladkowski’s Don Juan, about a high-functioning man with autism in Russia who participates in the staging of an opera.
The Fedeora Best Director Award, which is given by the Federation of Film Critics of Europe and the Mediterranean, went to Vitaly Mansky for Under the Sun, a look into the life of one family in North Korea and an examination of the state-run propaganda machine. The Fedeora Honorable Mention went to Call Me Marianna.
The Depth of Field Competition Award went to Pieter-jan De Pue’s Land of the Enlightened, about gangs of abandoned children in Afghanistan. The Depth of Field Honorable Mention went to Robert Greene’s Kate Plays Christine, about an actress playing a news reporter who killed herself on the air.
The winner in the Israeli Competition was Death in the Terminal, by Tali Shemesh and Asaf Sudry, about the beating of an Eritrean asylum seeker during a terror attack on the bus station in Beersheba last October. An honorable mention in the Israeli Film category went to Yael Kipper and Ronen Zaretzky’s Child Mother, about elderly Mizrahi women who share their memories of having been forced into marriage when they were still children.
The Tel Aviv/Jaffa Mayor’s Award went to Roman Shumunov’s Babylon Dreamers, about a group of immigrant break dancers in Ashdod. The Mute’s House by Tamar Kay, about a deaf Palestinian woman in Hebron, won the Student Competition. Kay is a student of the Sam Spiegel Film & Television School, Jerusalem Second prize in the Student Competition went to Yana Lerner’s Sashka, about a boy in Sderot who has to grow up fast when war breaks out and when he is sent to boarding school. Kay attends Sapir College.
Elad Davidovitch Shicovitch’s Off Guard, about the filmmaker’s decision about whether he, who was raised by an Israeli Arab, should continue to do reserve duty, won third prize in the Student Film Competition. Shicovitch went to Tel Hai College.