Anchorage, Scott Monahan’s dark drama about two brothers who take off on an ill-advised drug-running mission to Alaska, has won the 2021 Oldenburg International Film Festival, taking the German Independence Award for best film.
Anchorage screenwriter Dakota Loesch, who stars alongside Monahan in the indie drama, took Oldenburg’s best actor honor, the Seymour Cassel Award. Best actress went to Eaindra Kyaw Zin for her portrayal of a desperately ill woman who finds solace, and love, in another terminally-ill patient in the Myanmar melodrama What Happened to the Wolf? from director Na Gyi. Na Gyi remains in hiding with What Happened to the Wolf? star Paing Phyoe Thu from the Myanmar military junta, which ordered their arrest after seizing power in a coup earlier this year.
Monahan and Loesch were in Oldenburg to accept their comically massive trophies, as were Polish directors Dominik Krawiecki and Patrycja Płanik, who won Oldenburg’s Audacity Award for their feature debut, the provocatively-titled Faggots.
British filmmaker Paul Spurrier won the 2021 Spirit of Cinema Award for his horror spoof The Maestro, described as “Mr. Holland’s Opus meets the Texas Chainsaw Massacre,” which was shot entirely in Thailand under strict lockdown conditions.
The German Independence Award for best short film went to Wall#4 from director Lucas Camps, with a special mention for Robbie Bryan’s American Morning.
Oldenburg kicked off September 15 with a packed gala opening night at the city’s Congress Hall, the first European festival to host a full-capacity red carpet event since the start of the coronavirus pandemic. Citing the more than 7,000 fans that turned out this year, Oldenburg organizers said the 28th festival was a sign of a “return to normality” for the cinema industry.
Source: HollyWood
