34th HKIFF: Yang Heng’s Sun Spots, Zhao Dayong’s The High Life and Zhao Liang’s Petition Collect Gold and Silverware

The 34th edition of the HKIFF came to a close this just past week with the announcement of its winners: ten awards from five individual competition categories. A previous winner of the HKIFF FIPRESCI Prize for Betelnut, director Yang Heng (see pic below) won the Golden Digital Award with his minimalist cinema and almost silent work Sun Spots, a Chinese-Hong Kong co-production that was first shown at Rotterdam and had been battling for top honors alongside Zhao Dayong’s debut film, a realistic and honest look of the struggling lives in contemporary China, The High Life, which won the Silver Digital Award in this Asian Digital Competition. The same film also claimed the FIPRESCI Prize, with FIPRESCI dishing out an extra Special Mention award to Tangle, the directorial debut by the award-winning cinematographer Liu Yonghong (Blind Shaft).

Moving to documentaries portion of the fest, Zhao Liang’s 315-minute marathon/director’s cut version Petition (the doc was shown in Cannes last year) won the best documentary award in the competition of Humanitarian Awards For Documentaries. The documentary covers the large scope of social issues and analysis in the current China. Rob Lemkin, Thet Sambath’s Enemies of the People which on the Jury Prize at Sundance, won the outstanding documentary in this fest.

Other winners included: South Korea/France’s A Brand New Life by Ounie Lecomte, which won the SIGNIS Award. Finnish Letters To Father Jacob by Klaus Haro was the special mention film. Hanasaari A, an experimental short documentary, by Hannes Vartiainen, Pekka Veikkolainen won grand prize of the short film competition field. Paul Cotter’s The Berlin Wall won the jury prize of the same category.