Turkey Wins Top South East Europe Film Prize

From May 3 to 7 about 30 movies from Turkey, Bulgaria, Montenegro, Slovenia, Hungary, Serbia, Albania, Bosnia, Croatia, Greece, Slovakia were screened in the Goethe Institute in Los Angeles.

Founded in 2002 and incorporated in 2006, the South East European Film Festival, SEE FEST, is the leading voice in the US for the presentation of the cinematic and cultural diversity of South East Europe.

The most important festival prize, Bridging the Borders, which is awarded each year to the best feature film, went to Turkish director Ozcan Alper and his epic movie “Future Lasts Forever”.

A scene from the movie “Future Lasts Forever” | Photo by Youtube Print Screen

The movie, which explores Anatolian elegiac poems from the perspective of a university student, was screened as a part of the final festival night at UCLA’s Bridges Theatre.

The best debut feature movie according to the festival’s jury was “Faith, Love and Whiskey,” by Kristina Nikolova, a young Bulgarian-American filmmaker, which follows an expat on a journey from the US to Bulgaria.

A movie on Roma singers “Cigarettes and Songs” was pronounced the best documentary. The work of the Slovakian directors Marek Sulik and Jana Kovalcikova, it deals with the path toward the acceptance of Roma in Slovak communities with the help of music.

Award for the Best Short (fiction) was given to two movies “The Visit”, by Slovenian director Miha Mazzini, and Hungarian director Orsy Nagypal’s “Cold Shower”.

“Murder Revisited”, by Milan Miletic from Serbia, was awarded first prize in the category of short documentary.

Most votes from the audience went to the Romanian Movie “Hello! How are you?” directed by Alexandru Maftei, a romantic comedy dealing with love lost and regained.

The movies were chosen from about 30 films of different genres by three juries composed of 17 people from the film industry.