Palestinian filmmaker Mohamed Jabaly took best director for ‘Life Is Beautiful.’
Armenian war documentary from director Shoghakat Vardanyan, 1489, won the top prize for best film at the International Documentary Festival Amsterdam (IDFA).
The prize comes with a €15,000 ($16,000) cash bursary.
In the film, Vardanyan records her and her family’s efforts to find out what happened to her brother, Soghomon, a student and musician, age 21, who was close to completing his mandatory military service when a conflict broke out between Armenia and Azerbaijan in September 2020.
Soghomon went missing in action, identified only with the anonymous number 1489.
The IDFA jury said 1489 was “a film that acts as a piercing light that makes visible the vast hidden interior landscape of grief and creates a tangible presence from unbearable absence. Cinema as a tool of survival—to allow us all, to look at the things we would rather not see. And ultimately, an unforgettable example of cinema as an act of love.”
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