Eight films were in competition for the Documentary Grand Prize and 45 for the Audience Prize.
The Audience Prize, accompanied with $2000 offered by the francophone section Amnistie internationale Canada, went to Gérard Maximin for his documentary film Faces, recounting the incredible adventure of JR, the photographer, and Marc Berrebi, the producer, to achieve, without any authorization, the most unusual exhibition: men and women of the same trade, Palestinians and Israelis, agreed to make faces in front of the camera. Their gigantic portraits were posted illegally on both sides of the separation wall, and in several cities.
The Documentary Grand Prize, accompanied with $2500 offered by the International Center for Information and Documentation on Haiti, the Caribbean and the Afro-Canadian Community (CIDIHCA), went to Rodrigo Vazquez for his moving film Child Miners, focusing on the personal lives of two child miners in Bolivia. By his sensitive and respectful approach, the director succeeded in recounting the brutal exploitation of children forced to work in the mines of Bolivia.
This year's jury was comprised of Annika Gustafson, producer, director and winner of the 3rd 2008 MHRFF for her film Killing Time, Diego Briceno-Orduz, screenwriter, director, producer and editor, and Peter Leuprecht, international law expert and member of a committee of four "wise" persons whose mission is to develop a human rights programme for the European Union.
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Peter Leuprecht
is an international law expert. He earned Deputy Secretary-General of the venerable Council of Europe in 1993. He resigned 4 years later on a matter of principle. He was visiting professor at McGill University and UQAM, advisor to the Department of Justice Canada and dean to the McGill University Faculty of Law. From 2004 to 2008, he was Director to the Institut d'Études Internationales de Montréal(IEIM) and taught public international law at UQAM's legal sciences department. He is also a member of four "Wise persons" on human rights to the European Union. From 2000-2005, he was Special Representative of the Secretary-General of the UN for human rights in Cambodia. He was awarded the "Prix du Civisme Européen" in 1991 and, in 2001 he received the Human Rights Award of the Lord Reading Law Society. |
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Diego Briceno-Orduz
is a Colombian-born writer, director, editor and producer based in Montreal. Since 1996 he has been a very active film and video maker with a strong focus on social cinema and issues of exploitation, marginalization and North-South relations. Along Yanick Létourneau, he co-founded, Périphéria, an established production company and more recently he initiated Makila, a Multimedia coop specialized in interactive video production. He is currently pursuing his career as an independent director and producer, working on new fiction and non-fiction ventures and starting to explore alternative collaborative production models for new media. His works: A Saddletree (2000, 49 min); Things Never Said in Playa Perdida (2001, 25 min); Souvenir Kids (2005, 80 min); Midnight Ballads, (2007, 52 min) presented at the MHRFF 2008. |
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Annika Gustafson
Producer, director, originally from Sweden, Annika Gustafson moved to Canada in 1995 to pursue a degree in cinema. She also holds an international MBA specialized in film producing from l'ESCP in Paris, France and Lund University, Sweden. She has worked as a producer, director and camerawoman in both Sweden and Canada. She's currently in pre-production of SH*T! - a documentary about the global sanitation crises, and Are There Chillies in St Jérôme? - the second part of the saga of the Bhutanese refugees she followed in her award winning film Killing Time. |
