The 64th Sydney Film Festival last night awarded On Body and Soul, directed by Ildikó Enyedi, the prestigious 10th anniversary Sydney Film Prize, out of a selection of 12 Official Competition films. The $60,000 cash prize for ‘audacious, cutting-edge and courageous’ film was awarded to Enyedi at the Festival’s Closing Night Gala awards ceremony and event at the State Theatre, ahead of the Australian premiere screening of Bong Joon-ho’s Okja.
Accepting the award, Enyedi said,”It was such an amazingly strong competition. Its marvellous that such a film can move so many people, it gives me so much hope in cinema and in human communication”
Sydney filmmakers Sascha Ettinger Epstein and Claire Haywood were awarded the Documentary Australia Foundation Award for Australian Documentary’s $10,000 cash prize for The Pink House, about the last brothel in old mining town Kalgoorlie.
The Dendy Awards for Australian Short Films saw the $7000 cash prize for the Dendy Live Action Short Award going to Adele, directed by Mirene Igwabi. Sunday Emerson Gullifer was Highly Commended for her short film Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow. And Daniel Agdag’s animation Lost Property Office took out both the $7000 Rouben Mamoulian Award for Best Director and the $5000 Yoram Gross Animation Award.
The Event Cinemas Australian Short Screenplay Award, a $5,000 prize for the best short screenwriting, was awarded to Michael Cusack, the writer and director of stop motion animation After All. And the writers of Screenability short film The Milky Pop Kid, Johanna Garvin and Emily Dash, were Highly Commended.
The $10,000 Sydney-UNESCO City of Film Award, bestowed by Create NSW to a trail-blazing NSW-based screen practitioner, went to Indigenous Australian actor, director and writer Leah Purcell.
