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| Megalomaniac Photo: Courtesy of Fantasia International Film Festival |
It is "an astonishing, brutal piece of art that challenges the audience while simultaneously saying something deeply profound," said the jury in presenting this year's Cheval Noir Best Feature award to Karim Ouelhaj's troubling tale about the offspring of a serial killer, Megalomaniac. The film, also described as "the very sort of film that festivals exist to share," took a second award in the for of an Outstanding Performance nod for star Eline Schumacher, who plays a brutalised young woman who doubts her own capacity for change as she stumbles down a very dark path.
The rest of the awards announced at this year's Fantasia International Film Festival included a Best Director prize for South Korea's July Jung, whose powerful film about institutionalised harm and neglect in a student work experience programme, Next Sohee, will screen on 3 August. "With a procedural's grim accumulation of detail, July Jung's direction portrays a cruel yet frighteningly efficient system that uses up and casts aside the teenage girls making it go," said the jury. "Her case study in the disastrous effects of capitalism gives life and specificity to one of its casualties, while making the title's sobering suggestion that she can be replaced with an identical labourer in a heartbeat,"
The other Outstanding Performance award went to Zorion Eguileor for his role in Spanish horror film The Elderly. He was praised for "his unsparing, visceral depiction of the brutal loss of dignity, agency, and sense of purpose inflicted by age and social institutions regarding the needs and desires of men stripped of their core identities. "
Those awards in full:-
Cheval Noir competition
- Best Feature: Megalomaniac (Belgium, d. Karim Ouelhaj)
- Best Director: July Jung (Next Sohee, South Korea)
- Best Screenwriter: Kosuke Mukai, Yuki Tanada (My Broken Mariko, Japan, d.Yuki Tanada)
- Best Score (The Sandro Forte Award): Alexandre Desplat (Final Cut, France, d. Michel Hazanavicius)
- Best Cinematographer: Daniel Katz (House Of Darkness, USA, d. Neil LaBute)
- Outstanding Performance: Zorion Eguileor (The Elderly, Spain, d. Raúl Cerezo, Fernando González Gómez)
- Outstanding Performance: Eline Schumacher (Megalomaniac, Belgium, d. Karim Ouelhaj)
- Special Mention: Special Delivery (South Korea, d. Park Dae-min)
New Flesh Competition For Best First Feature
- Best First Feature: Kappei (Japan, d. Takashi Hirano)
- Special Mention: The Fifth Thoracic Vertebra (South Korea, d. Syeyoung Park)
- Special Mention: All Jacked Up And Full Of Worms (USA, d. Alex Phillips)
International Short Film Competition
- Best Short Film: From.Beyond (Norway, d. Fredrik S. Hana)
- Best Director: Arati Kadav (The Astronaut And His Parrot, India)
- Best Screenwriter: Marc Philip Ginolas (Till, Germany, d. Marc Philip Ginolas)
- Outstanding Performance: Erin Carroll (Mara, USA/Germany, d. Catharina Schürenberg)
- Outstanding Performance: Marie-France Marcotte (La Guépe, Quebec, d. Marc Beaupré)
- Special Mention: Blackbear (Canada, d. Bryce Hodgson)
- Special Mention: Darker (Belgium/Netherlands, d. Frank Van den Bogaart)
Axis: Satoshi Kon Award For Excellence In Animation
- Best Animated Feature: Inu-oh (Japan/China, d. Masaaki Yuasa)
- Special Mention: Summer Ghost (Japan, d. Loundraw)
- Best Animated Short Film - Gold: Amen A Man (South Korea d. Kim Kyeongbae)
- Best Animated Short Film - Silver: Things That Disappear (South Korea, d. Kim Changsoo)
- Best Animated Short Film - Bronze: Aurora (Brazil d. Radhi Meron)
AQCC-Camera Lucida
- Just Remembering
