By Glenn Dunks
Rajkummar Rao wins BEST ACTOR for India's Oscar submission "Newton"
This past Thursday, the 11th Asia Pacific Screen Awards were held in Brisbane, Australia. The awards cover 70 countries and areas, which makes their scope even bigger than APSA's cousin the European Film Awards. Now, fair admission, working for APSA is my day job for four months of the year, but when I say what they do is so incredible and important you should know I'm not saying so out of obligation. How many award shows do you know that can honour an Australian 1920s-set western, a contemporary Georgian drama for actressexuals, and Syrian documentaries about life-saving humanitarians?
More than half of the 13 categories this year were won by films on various Oscar eligibility longlists and therefore in serious contention of nominations. While the big winner of the night for Best Feature Film was ultimately Warwick Thornton's Sweet Country of Australia, it won't be released locally until January next year so it could potentially be eligible for 2018 (his 2009 debut, which also won the Best Feature Film APSA made the foreign language shortlist). But the big country winners of the night were Georgia and Russia with three wins.
The winners are after the jump...
BEST FEATURE FILM
Sweet Country (Australia)
JURY GRAND PRIZE
Ana Urushadze for her direction of Scary Mother (Georgia)
Georgia's Oscar submission SCARY MOTHER won the Jury Grand Prize
JURY GRAND PRIZE
Aleksandr Yatsenko for his performance in Arrhythmia (Russian Federation)
CULTURAL DIVERSITY AWARD UNDER THE PATRONAGE OF UNESCO
Dede (Georgia)
Special Mention: Lady of the Lake (India)
Russia's LOVELESS can't stop winning prizes
ACHIEVEMENT IN DIRECTION
Andrey Zvyagintsev, Loveless (Russian Federation)
BEST PERFORMANCE BY AN ACTRESS
Nata Murvanidze, Scary Mother (Georgia)
Rajkummar Rao in "Newton," India's Oscar submission
BEST PERFORMANCE BY AN ACTOR
Rajkummar Rao, Newton (India)
Special Mention: Navid Mohammadzadeh, No Date No Signature (Islamic Republic of Iran)
ACHIEVEMENT IN CINEMATOGRAPHY
Timofey Lobov and Pyotr Dukhovskoi, The Bottomless Bag (Russian Federation)
BEST SCREENPLAY
Mayank Tewari and Amit V Masurkar, Newton (India)
YOUNG CINEMA AWARD
Ilgar Najaf, Pomegranate Orchard (Azerbaijan)
BEST YOUTH FEATURE FILM
The Seen and Unseen (Indonesia)
BEST ANIMATED FEATURE FILM
Window Horses: The Poetic Persian Epiphany of Rosie Ming (Canada)
BEST DOCUMENTARY FEATURE FILM
Last Men in Aleppo (Syrian Arab Republic, Denmark)
Special Mention: Kim Dotcom: Caught in the Web (New Zealand)
FIAPF AWARD FOR OUTSTANDING ACHIEVEMENT IN FILM
Bianca Balbuena (Philippines)
Window Horses and Last Men in Aleppo are on the Oscar eligibility lists for Best Animated Feature and Best Documentary Feature respectively, while Scary Mother, Newton, Loveless and Pomegranate Orchard are all in contention for Best Foreign Language Film. Other foreign language submissions that were nominated, but didn't win, include Foxtrot (Israel), Centaur (Kyrgyzstan) and Wajib (Palestine), while Breath (Iran) was a nominee last year.
You might also recognize the surname of Scary Mother's director - she is the daughter of Zaza Urushadze, one of Georgia's most acclaimed directors whose film Tangerines was Oscar-nominated for Estonia just a few years ago.