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GOLDEN GATE NEW DIRECTORS (NARRATIVE FEATURE) PRIZE
The Golden Gate Awards New Directors jury was composed of film critic Justin Chang, producer Benjamin Domenech, and IFP's Executive Director Joana Vicente.
Winner: The Demons, Philippe Lesage (Canada)
* Receives $10,000 cash prize
In a statement, the jury noted: "The Demons is an extraordinarily perceptive and structurally daring exploration of childhood in all its terrors and anxieties, both real and imagined."
Special Jury Prize: Mountain, Yaelle Kayam (Israel/Denmark)
The jury noted: "The film provides a rigorous and multifaceted character study that becomes a bold statement about the role of women in physical and psychological confinement."
GOLDEN GATE AWARDS FOR DOCUMENTARY FEATURES
The GGA Documentary feature competitions jury was comprised of journalist, film critic and programmer Eric Hynes; Sundance Institute's Director of the Documentary Film Program Tabitha Jackson; and documentarian Jeff Malmberg.
Documentary Feature Winner: Cameraperson, Kirsten Johnson (USA)
* Receives $10,000 cash prize
The jury noted in a statement: "We honor Cameraperson for its compassion and curiosity; for its almost tangible connection to subjects and humble acknowledgment of its own subjectivity; for its singular enfolding of memoir, essay and collage; for its perfect expression of the vital collaboration between director and editor; and for its disarming invitation for us to participate in the meaning and construction of the work, and by extension the meaning and construction of documentary cinema itself."
Special Jury Prize: Notes on Blindness, Peter Middleton, James Spinney (UK/France)
The jury noted: "We extend a special mention to Notes on Blindness, in recognition of an audaciously ambitious, formally inventive and yet fully realized film that somehow manages to translate an intensely interior experience into compelling, even revelatory cinema, ingeniously articulating what it means to see and be seen."
Bay Area Documentary Winner: The Return, Kelly Duane de la Vega, Katie Galloway (USA)
* Receives $5,000 cash prize
The jury noted: "We are honoring a film that starts where others would stop, that addresses the inhumanity of America's criminal justice system through patient and humane observation, handling the complexities of its subjects not as matters to work around, but to embrace as a pathway to deeper feeling and understanding."
