‘Blue Island,’ ‘Geographies of Solitude’ Win Top Jury Honors at Hot Docs
variety.comJennie Punter Chan Tze Woon’s “Blue Island,” a doc-narrative hybrid exploring Hong Kong’s recent protest movement and ensuing crackdown, won Hot Docs’ Best International Feature Documentary Award and a Cnd. $10,000 cash prize, it was announced Saturday in Toronto at the festival’s awards ceremony, held at the TIFF Bell Lightbox.The film was cited by the jury for its “evocative use of re-enactments interwoven with traditional documentary forms to create a rich, socially-grounded cinematic tapestry.”North American rights to “Blue Island” were picked up by New York-headquartered documentary distributor Icarus Films in advance of the film’s world premiere at Hot Docs, which is an Academy Award qualifying festival for feature documentaries.
Produced by Peter Yam, “Blue Island” now automatically qualifies for consideration in the Academy’s Best Documentary Feature category without the standard theatrical run, provided it complies with Academy rules.
The International Feature Documentary Competition section saw the Special Jury Prize and Cdn $5,000 cash awarded to Laura Faerman and Marina Weis’s “The Wind Blows the Border,” about an Indigenous women in Brazil who battled agribusiness expansion on her community’s ancestral land.
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