The internet ate my essay! No really, 70 minutes of work down the drain and even the draft cannot be retrieved. Which is why I’ll use WordPress from now on to write my articles: at least it saves the latest draft every five minutes. So no article on the BIFFF today (there’s only so much energy in my body and I can’t waste another 70 minutes tonight), but a toned-down version of the original text. The 28th BIFFF (or Brussels International Fantastic Film Festival) has closed its doors, but not without awarding lots of prizes. Let’s take a look at the winners… (the blurb comes straight from the BIFFF site).
The jury, fronted by The Howling‘s Dee Wallace, awarded the Grand Prix (Golden Raven) to Jaume Collet-Saura‘s Orphan, a film already reviewed on DV. The film never got a cinema release in Belgium, despite being bought by a distributor, so the BIFFF decided to add it to their line-up and the jury really liked it.
The jury also awarded a Silver Raven (Special Prize) to two other films, Thirst by Chan-wook Park and Symbol by Hitoshi Matsumoto. Symbol was also given the 7th Orbit award.
The award for the least fashionably titled award goes to the Best Thriller Award. The winner is a Spanish-French co-production: Cell 211 (Celda 211) by Daniel Monzon. The jury also gave a special mention to Uwe Boll, for the “Bingo scene” in Rampage.
The Silver Méliès is the award given to the Best European Film. The German film Die Tür (The Door) by Anno Saul was the winner and a special mention was given to Cargo by Ivan Engler and Ralph Etter.
And finally the viewers’ say: the audience liked a fake documentary on vampires best: Vincent Lannoo‘s Vampires.
Avenue Kurtodrome 