‘Memories of a Burning Body,’ ‘No Other Land’ Win Panorama Audience Awards

The sophomore feature from Costa Rican director Antonella Sudasassi Furniss, Memories of a Burning Body, won the top prize for best fiction film, while No Other Land, by an Israeli-Palestinian collective, took best documentary.

The Berlin Film Fest has unveiled the winners of this year’s Panorama Audience Awards, voted by ordinary viewers at the world’s largest public film festival.

Memories of a Burning Body, the second feature from Costa Rican director Antonella Sudasassi Furniss, won the top prize for best fiction film, while No Other Land by Basel Adra, Hamdan Ballal, Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor took the Panorama Audience Award for best documentary.

Memories of a Burning Body follows a trio of seventy-something women as they discuss their sexuality and their bodies, confronting the taboos and constrictions of living in a sexist and repressive society. Produced by Substance Films in co-production with Playlab Films, Memories of a Burning Body is being worldwide by Bendita Film Sales.

No Other Land, directed by a collective of Israeli and Palestinian filmmakers, traces the Israeli government’s attempts to expel Palestinians in Masafer Yatta, a rural village in the West Bank.

It offers a devastating chronicle of the “decades-long legal battles, chronic injustices and daily humiliations faced by Palestinians in the West Bank.

No Other Land was made as a Palestinian-Norwegian co-production between Yabayay Media and Antipode Films.

In total more than 24,000 Berlinale viewers cast votes for the 31 films screened in this year’s Panorama and Panorama Dokumente sidebars.