Marjolein Postra House of HopeA feature documentary about a Palestinian couple who teaches young students about nonviolent resistance at an elementary school in the occupied West Bank won the Best International Feature Documentary award at the Hot Docs Canadian International Documentary Film Festival on Friday night.
Winning the festival’s top jury prize means that Postra, a Palestinian-Dutch co-production that had its world premiere at IDFA in Amsterdam, will be eligible for consideration in the Best Documentary Feature category at the Academy Awards.
Other Hot Docs winners include Best Canadian Feature Documentary Saigon Story: Two Shooting Incidents in the Jungle Kingdom, A film about two families connected by the iconic Eddie Adam picture from Oscar-nominated director Kim Nguyen. The award went to the best emerging international filmmaker Paykar Directed by Daoud Helmande, this is another film from the Netherlands in which the director from exile in Amsterdam reflects on life as a refugee after having to flee Iran and Afghanistan.
Other winners include the Special Jury Prize for Canadian Feature Documentary going to Banchi Hanuse to celebrate, A film about an indigenous community in northern Canada won the Audience Award at SXSW, while the Special Jury Award for International Feature Documentary went to Heidron Holzwind, for his film Year 49in which an anarchist imprisoned since 1980 reflects on his radical past through letters.
Elsewhere, the award for Best Social Impact Documentary went to directors Chul Young Cho, Shin Wan Kim and Jung Woo Kim for their film. seoul guards, A South Korean film about the protests against the declaration of martial law in 2024 and during a night of chaos and mass resistance of citizens.
Hot Docs will reveal the Audience Award winners on May 3.
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