Four features and two shorts were named winners of the audience and jury awards at AFI Fest 2010 on Thursday, and celebrated directors Jean-Luc Godard, Bertrand Tavernier and Apichatpong Weerasethakul did not find themselves in the winners circle.
In the World Cinema section, where the 23 selections included Weerasethakul’s Cannes Palme d’Or winner “Uncle Boonmee Can Recall His Past Lives,” Godard’s “Film Socialism,” Tavernier’s “The Princess of Montpensier” and Oscar submissions “Carancho” and “The Human Resources Manager,” the winner was Taika Waititi’s New Zealand-set “Boy” (left), about a Maori youngster whose father has just returned home from jail.
The New Auteurs section winner was Cheol-soo Jang’s Korean film “Bedevilled,” which beat out seven other films that included Xavier Dolan’s “Heartbeats,” Cam Archer’s “S— Year,” and Michaelangelo Frammartino’s mesmerizingly deliberate “Le Quattro Volte,” the subject of a recent New York Times rave.
In the Young Americans section, the six competitors included Kitao Sakurai’s “Aardvark” and David Robert Mitchell’s “The Myth of an American Sleepover”; the winner was Mike Ott’s “Littlerock,” about a pair of Japanese siblings who find themselves stranded in a California desert town when their car breaks down.
The Breakthrough winner was Oren Kaplan’s “Hamill,” inspired by the life of deaf UFC fighter Matt Hamill. It was competing against four other films, including Ava DuVernay’s drama “I Will Follow” and Nick Simon’s black comedy “Removal.”
Two films were also honored by the Short Film Jury, making them eligible for the Oscar Animated Short and Live-Action Short categories for next year. (This year’s deadline has already passed.) The free-love documentary “Quadrangle” won in the Live Action Short Film category, while the Internet favorite “Marcel the Shell with Shoes On,” directed by Dean Fleischer-Camp and written by Saturday Night Live performer Jenny Slate, won in the Animated Short Film Category.
Two other shorts, “Photograph of Jesus” and “The High Level Bridge,” received honorable mentions.
