Palestinian filmmaker Scandar Copti’s Israel-set family drama “Happy Holidays” won the top prize Sunday at the Thessaloniki Film Festival, taking home the Golden Alexander for best feature film.
Copti’s sophomore feature, his first film since his Oscar-nominated 2009 debut “Ajami,” premiered in the Venice Film Festival’s Horizons sidebar, winning the best screenplay prize. Variety’s Siddhant Adlakha described it as “a piercing, realistic family drama, the inflection points of which reveal deep cultural and political dimensions surrounding gender and ethnicity.”
“Happy Holidays” follows four interconnected characters who share their unique realities, highlighting the complexities between genders, generations and cultures. The ensemble cast — comprised of Arab and Jewish characters alike — creates a multifaceted portrait of life in Haifa, Israel’s third-largest city.
The Thessaloniki jury, which included filmmaker and producer Sara Driver (“Boom for Real”), filmmaker Denis Côté (“Vic + Flo Saw a Bear”) and producer Konstantinos Kontovrakis (“How to Have Sex”), praised the film “for intricately weaving different narratives and perspectives that fully expose the complexity of national, gender and class dynamics that can divide societies and for seeing the future in the face of a young woman.”
Leonardo van Dijl’s debut “Julie Keeps Quiet,” a Cannes Critics’ Week selection that’s representing Belgium in the international feature film race, won the Silver Alexander for best director, with the jury heralding the “powerful but quiet psychological film” as “beautifully constructed, performed and shot.” Variety’s Guy Lodge was equally moved by what he described as van Dijl’s “tense, taut, artfully hushed debut feature.”
In the acting categories, the award for best actor went to Mahmood Bakri for his performance as a Palestinian refugee stranded in Athens in Mahdi Fleifel’s Cannes Directors’ Fortnight premiere “To a Land Unknown,” while Joana Santos won the award for best actress for her lead turn as a warehouse picker in Laura Carreira’s “On Falling,” a co-winner of best directing honors in San Sebastian.
In the festival’s Meet the Neighbors+ competition section, which includes debut or sophomore films from the 36 countries of Southeastern Europe, the Mediterranean and the Middle East, the Golden Alexander for best feature went to “Vittoria,” by directors Alessandro Cassigoli and Casey Kauffman. The jury praised the film — a portrait of a happily married mother of three in Naples who’s suddenly tormented by an intense longing for a daughter — as “a surprising, moving, innovative approach to the very sensitive subject of adoption that, catching us completely off guard, brought the audience, and us, to tears.”
The section’s Silver Alexander for best director went to “Thank You for Banking With Us” filmmaker Laila Abbas, who according to the jury “manages to narrate a female-driven story of everyday life within the constraints of the patriarchy and political situation of Palestine with an intriguing tone and unexpected elements of humor that skillfully play with audience expectations.”
Acting honors in the Meet the Neighbors+ section went to Volodymyr Kravchuk for Pavlo Ostrikov’s “U Are the Universe” and Antonia Zegers for “The Exiles,” by Belén Funes, with Zegers’ co-star Elvira Lara and the entire cast of Christos Massalas’ “Killerwood” also receiving special mentions.
In the Film Forward competition section showcasing innovative filmmaking, the Golden Alexander went to Matthew Rankin’s “Universal Language,” Canada’s Oscar entry, while the Silver Alexander went to Noaz Deshe’s “Xoftex.”
The Thessaloniki Film Festival runs Oct. 31 – Nov. 10.
