as he wrote hollywood reporter, Cauter Ben Hania’s heartbreaking Tunisian documentary Four Daughters won the first prize for Best International Film at the 2023 Munich International Film Festival.
The film tells the story of Olfa Hamrouni, a Tunisian mother whose two eldest daughters left the country to join the Islamic State in Libya and was never seen again. While Ben Hania investigates Hamrouni’s story, he hires two actors to play Olfa’s missing daughters. The documentary-drama mix premiered at Cannes, where it won the Golden Eye Award for Best Documentary (shared with Asmae El Mudir’s The Mother of All Lies).
João Salaviza and René Nader Messora, directors of another hybrid film, The Flower of Buriti, received the Munich CineVision Award for Best Emerging International Filmmaker. Shot in close collaboration with the Brazilian Krajo people, the film is a fusion of ethnography and poetic narrative, exploring the group’s tribal memories.
Making the transition from Belgian-Congolese rapper to director, Balozhi’s feature film debut, Omen, another feature film based in Cannes, won the Munich CineRebels Award, while Agnia Galdanova’s documentary Queendom about Russian avant-garde artist Marvin received only a special mention.
The Fipresci International Critics’ Award went to Henning Beckhoff’s German drama Fossils, about an aging miner and his environmentalist daughter.
Voted by nearly 58,000 visitors to the Munich festival, the Festival Audience Award went to Aki Kaurismäki’s Fallen Leaves.
Formerly star of erotic movie “Emmanuelle” Passed after fighting cancer.