The Sudanese film You Will Die at 20, by Amjad Abu Alala, premiered in Spain in the 17th edition of the Tarifa Tangier African Film Festival (FCAT), has won the award for Best Fiction Feature Film in this edition of the FCAT, “for its wonderful cinematographic language, for the values it represents, for showing how a young man works and fights against preconceived ideas, under the weight of religion and tradition and how he decides to wake up the world” , in the words of the international jury that has awarded him the award.
The movie director, Amjad Abu Alala, thanked his award for videoconference to the jury and the FCAT “for making it possible for cinema to move forward.” He also expressed his desire to travel to the festival in Tarifa as soon as circumstances allow.
The jury also decided to award the first ABOUT Award from the Spanish Cooperation to the film that best contributes to the dissemination of the 17 Goals of the 2030 Agenda, the eradication of poverty and the full exercise of human rights to Talking About Trees, del sudanés Suhaib Gasmelbari.
The AECID jury awards this documentary “for being a very cinematographic film, which tells how a dictatorship can end up ending the cinema in a country. To help the five filmmakers who star in this film and who were unable to continue their careers, in their fight to reopen a cinema in the outskirts of Khartoum and return cinema to the Sudanese population, and for the director’s courage in filming this documentary in the times of the dictatorship, without authorization and in complete secrecy, with the risks that this implies. Because the Sudanese revolution arose the year the documentary was released in 2019 and it is as if history responded to it ”.
The Casa Africa Award for Best Documentary Feature Film fell on Buddha in Africa, by the South African Nicole Schafer, another of the premieres of the 17th edition of the FCAT. The jury has justified it “by the way in which the director teaches a little documented contemporary process in an unknown country that is Malawi: the Chinese presence in Africa, through education, but also through culture, the Buddhist religion, martial arts and teaching. Because of how the director highlights contradictions and paradoxes and leaves a space of freedom and criticism for the viewer so that they can form their own opinion ”.
The international jury also agreed to award a Special Mention to the documentary 143, rue du Désert (Hassen Ferhani, Algeria, 2019) and another to the fiction feature film Abou Leila (Amin Sidi-Boumediene, Argelia, 2019).
For its part, the Andalusian jury, made up of the filmmakers Carlos Violadé, Marta M. Mata and Sara Gallardo, was in charge of unveiling the award for Best Short Film from the Coming Soon section for Machini (Frank Mukunday, Tétshim, Democratic Republic of the Congo, 2019), an animated short without dialogue. The Congolese filmmakers also thanked them for their award during the virtual event that revealed the record.
For the jury, “a great story from the simplest and smallest, from something as essential and primitive as stones. Machini creates a unique universe, full of poetry and originality, showing a reality: the consequences that the progress of the West continues to have on the African continent.
The jury also considered awarding a special mention to Bablinga (Fabien Dao, Burkina Faso, 2019), “a different look at migration and the sacrifice that implies leaving the place where you come from.”
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