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Discover the award-winning films of the 2nd Firenze Film Festival’s competition categories and learn more about all the inspiring filmmakers we featured this year.
Best Cinematography Winner
No One Knows
As his parents' marriage fell apart, the seven-year-old boy Cai Sen was abandoned to an orphanage where he felt excluded. He met a distinctive but adorable girl who soon became his only friend. Cai thought he has met another lonely soul, but unexpectedly got framed and betrayed by her. He fled the orphanage with rage. After taken back to the orphanage by the police, the boy faced a hard decision of whether to forgive his only friend or to be lonely again.
Tao Zhang
Best Director Winner
Soundwave
A teenage inventor’s life spirals into chaos when a nefarious group discovers he’s invented a device that can hear into the past.
Dylan Narang
Best Editor Winner
Online Billie
A young up-and-coming actor meets an intriguing waitress. As he starts having feelings| he discovers she's a 'camgirl'.
Lou Assous
Best Experimental Winner
Free to work
What does remain in your body and in your memory of all the work you've done? “Fondata sul lavoro” is the first article of the Italian Constitution: “Italy is a democratic republic founded on work”. Yet citizens leave, because there is no work. The lm retraces what remains of the work that people used to do| how it is inscribed in their bodies and stuck in their memories. Meet Antonio, Eros, Paola and many others. Nine Italian migrants. Each one of them is recalling and repeating, as in a theatrical performance, words and gestures of their past jobs, tapping into humor, poetry and monotony of repetitive mundane activities. In front of a grey background their reenacted stories retrace the transition from manual and material labour into immaterial work.
Agnese Cornelio
Best Feature Documentary Winner
City of the Dead
Death is still a taboo that causes fascination and fear in equal parts. Nevertheless, there are people who face it every day in their work and have found another way to understand and cope with it. The cemetery and the funeral home in Palma are the settings for this story. City of the Dead is a discourse on death, narrated by those who have learned to live with it.
Miguel Eek
Best Feature Film Winner
Clementine
In an unspecified Mediterranean island a boy comes across two peculiar men in striped costumes. Soon, the boy realizes that life also has two faces. It can be both an ugly war and a beautiful girl called Clementine.
Longinos Panagi
Best Foreign Documentary Winner
Kiruna – A Brand New World
Located more than 200 km above the polar circle, the Swedish mining town Kiruna is built on the world’s largest and most modern iron ore mining tunnel, which created a significant income for the Swedish government. However, due to the mining the city has started to collapse and in order to save the industry, the city council together with the mining company LKAB have decided to move the town and its citizens 3 kilometres to the east. In doing so, the town has turned a potential disaster into a great opportunity. The new Kiruna will be an even more progressive, even better society for the future. But is it even possible to plan an ideal world? On the backdrop of a moving city, the citizens of the New Kiruna are fighting their own battles. We follow the teacher Timo, a local activist against the moving, the teenage Sami girl Maja who is discovering her family roots and cultural heritage as well as Abdalrahman, a teenage boy from Yemen, who came to the town as a refugee and slowly realizes that it takes more than just a paper to become a Swede. The seemingly very different characters are facing the same questions as the city is looking for its place. They are starting their personal search for identity, values and a greater future. KIRUNA – A BRAND NEW WORLD is a portrait of a utopian and dystopian town as well as a hard-hitting reflection of today’s society.
Greta Stocklassa
Best Italian Film Winner
Non è una bufala
Renzo, 40, lives alone in an apartment that has turned into a kind of bunker. It's been a long time since he leaves home and the only source of livelihood are pizzas and supplì that come home. Convinced that jihadist terrorism is on the verge of attacking Italy| he decides to take justice on his own by sending a bombshell to the Embassy of Saudi Arabia, a nation guilty, in his opinion, of financing terrorists. Not everything will run smoothly as he had expected.
Niccolò Gentili, Ignacio Paurici
Best Music Video Winner
C’mon Tigre · Behold The Man
Taking inspiration from a science fiction novel from 1969 by Michael Moorcock, the story is about a modern version of the first human being, who appears on earth as an adult child, being enthusiastic for discovering the great inebriation that freedom can give, the liberation of the body using the metaphor of dance. Something that makes you lose the brakes, makes you sweat and feel good. Then it happens that when you come into contact with other human beings who are learning like you to manage their freedom, you stumble on the concept of limit.
Marco Molinelli, Domenico Tedone
Best Screenplay Winner
Natalia Rising
A mystical teen prodigy squelched by her overprotective dad forms a covert band with a vivacious singer and her psychic dog in a win/lose battle for her autonomy.
Donna Bonilla Wheeler
Best Short Documentary Winner
Unforgivable
Imperdonabile is the story of Alice and Emmanuel, two people on opposing sides during the Rwandan genocide in 1994. It reveals what happens when the person who nearly destroyed your life confronts you and asks for forgiveness.
Giosue Petrone
Best Short Film Winner
My Last Lullaby
Is there a suitable age to face a loss for the first time? Pamela, is 20 years old. She has just lost her grandfather. Her entire family gets together in the grandparents’s house, the day before the funeral. It is a place full of memories. Without noticing, Paloma is led to confront her loss. As if this end of summer marked the end of her frivolity.
Pauline Garcia
Best Student Film Short Winner
Moment to Moment
A combat soldier returns home to Jerusalem for the weekend. He witnesses a stabbing during which he just freezes up in face of this violence. Yoav is in denial, and leaves the crime scene alone. But when he gets home| his attempts to have a normal weekend at home are overwhelmed by an unshakable anxiety.
Tal Ninyo