La Bola Negra, Elsinore Top Hamptons Film Festival Awards — SkimNews
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- La Bola Negra, directed by Javier Calvo and Javier Ambrossi, won Best Narrative Feature as the audience pick at the 34th Hamptons Film Festival; the film is Spain's official submission for Best International Feature Film at the Oscars and previously won the TIFF People's Choice award.
- Elsinore, directed by Simon Stone and starring Andrew Scott, made its East Coast premiere at HIFF after collecting the international people's choice prize at Toronto and wins at other recent festivals.
- The 34th HIFF ran October 2-12 with 205 screenings of 140-plus features and shorts, with the festival citing its timing between larger fall events and awards campaign season as the reason for its growing reputation.
- NAZA, a documentary portrait of Israeli military attacks on Palestinian communities directed by Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor, received the Victor Rabinowitz & Joanne Grant Award for Social Justice despite drawing protests and controversy at its screenings.
- If Pigeons Turned to Gold won Best Documentary Feature, with jurors calling it 'a bold, deeply personal story of the filmmaker's own family struggles with addiction' told 'with provocative rawness and inventiveness.'
- The narrative jury gave a Special Mention to The Guest, directed by Mads Mengel, while Burgundy, directed by Michael Dweck and Gregory Kershaw, captured HIFF's documentary audience award.
Why it matters: La Bola Negra arrived at Hamptons fresh off TIFF People's Choice — historically an Oscar bellwether — while Elsinore extended its Toronto international people's choice streak, meaning both films are accumulating the audience-prize momentum that Oscar campaigns rely on heading into nomination season, with Spain now positioned in the Best International Feature race.
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