Film on Eritrean killed when mistaken for terrorist wins at Docaviv festival

Work on Mizrahi women forced into marriage honored.

By HANNAH BROWN
KAROLINA BIELAWSKA’S ‘Call Me Marianna’ won the Docaviv’s international competition. (photo credit: STUDIO FILMOWE KALEJDOSKOP)
KAROLINA BIELAWSKA’S ‘Call Me Marianna’ won the Docaviv’s international competition.
(photo credit: STUDIO FILMOWE KALEJDOSKOP)
Karolina Bielawska’s Call Me Marianna, which tells the story of a Polish woman who is suing her parents to allow her to undergo gender reassignment surgery, won the Tel Aviv International Documentary Festival’s international competition.
An honorable mention at Wednesday night’s Docaviv event 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, that is 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 kills herself while on air.
The winner in the Israeli Competition was Death in the Terminal, by Tali Shemesh and Asaf Sudry, about the lynching of an Eritrean asylum-seeker during a terrorist attack at the central 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 Breakdancers 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 and Television School in 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. Lerner attends Sapir Academic College near Sderot.
Elad Davidovitch Shicovitch’s Off Guard, telling the personal story of the filmmaker’s decision about whether he, who was raised by an Israeli Arab, should continue to do reserve duty or not, won third prize in the Student Film Competition. Shicovitch went to Tel Hai Academic College near Kiryat Shmona.