AMER WINS NEW TALENT GRAND PIX

Audience Award 2010

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AMER WINS NEW TALENT GRAND PIX

Beautiful, Belgian thriller 'Amer' wins New Talent Grand PIX 2010 and 50,000 euros.
 

Saturday night the Belgian directors and married couple Hélène Cattet and Bruno Forzani won the grand prize at Copenhagen's film festival CPH PIX for their debut film 'Amer'. One of CPH PIX's central themes is to support emerging talent in the film world, so the 50,000 euros are earmarked for the winner of the festival's New Talent Grand PIX.

13 films competed for the prize in 2010, all made by debut directors and they came from all over the world - from Philippines to Finland, Denmark, the United States and Argentina. The jury, which found the winner, consists of U.S. producer Jon Nguyen, the English director Peter Strickland (who won PIX-prize last year) and the Danish director Pernille Fischer Christensen. The award ceremony took place at Pumpehuset in Copenhagen Saturday evening.
 

'Amer': a vibrant, seductive and dangerous film

The jury's reasoning that it was precisely 'Amer', who deserve to win the New Talent Grand PIX is:

"This award goes to a film that fully justifies its presence on the big screen. Executed with bloody-minded precision and a brave sense of cinema's capacity for reinvention. This is a film that knows exactly what it is and holds together as a solid, cohesive world. A film that is fully alive, seductive and dangerous, and ready to strike whenever the projector comes on. The award goes to Amer."
 

About 'Amer'

Belgian-French 'Amer' is a modern Giallo film - the peculiar thriller genre that enjoyed its heyday in 1970s Italy. Living up to the best of the genre's key directors such as Mario Bava, Sergio Martino and, not least, Dario Argento, 'Amer' tells a visually intoxicating and almost wordless murder mystery in three acts as we follow the three stages of the life of the beautiful Ana.

As a child she, just like the genre prescribes, experiences a traumatic link between sexuality and death. This link comes to haunt her later on in life, when she experiences the lecherous gazes of men as a form of violent assault. But the plot quickly recedes into the background and is replaced by a freaked out pictorial experiment (to put it mildly), a kind of medley on everything that is great about this genre.

The film is directed by the couple Hélène Cattet and Bruno Forzani, who have earned many accolades in the past at genre film festivals for their experimental shorts. With 'Amer', they have made one of the most picturesque and consistent genre films in a long time. The film is true to its role models, while it is just as much a jazzy improvisation and a great declaration of love to the Italian horror genre. That this film ought to be seen in the cinema goes without saying. Read more

Interview Hélène Cattet, Bruno Forzani, directors of the winner film Amer