'La Bola Negra' Wins Top Prize at Denver Film Festival — SkimNews
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- La Bola Negra, the Spanish-French epic by Javier Ambrossi and Javier Calvo about gay desire and Federico García Lorca, won the Krzysztof Kieslowski Award for Best Feature at the 49th Denver Film Festival, following its TIFF audience prize in September and its BFI London Film Festival audience award, with an awards streak reaching back to Best Director at Cannes in May
- I Play Rocky, Peter Farrelly's Sly Stallone biopic starring breakout Anthony Ippolito as the "Rocky" star/screenwriter, took the Audience Award for narrative feature, repeating its October win at the Virginia Film Festival after finishing runner-up to "La Bola Negra" in Toronto's audience category; it opens in select theaters Thursday ahead of a November 20 wide release
- Whispers in May, a portrait of female friendship in the twilight of adolescence from Chinese filmmaker Dongnan Chen and this year's CPH:DOX winner, won the Maysles Brothers Award for Best Documentary, with a jury statement penned by Vanity Fair's Chris Murphy and producer Justine Suzanne Jones calling it "formally daring and emotionally authentic"; the Hong Kong-Netherlands-South Korea-Sweden production is still seeking distribution
- Denver Film Festival ran October 22 through November 1 and showcased 130 films under CEO Kevin Smith and artistic director Matthew Campbell, with guests including Carrie Coon, John Leguizamo and John Cho — Coon's "The Liberation" and Leguizamo's "The Odyssey" are in the awards mix
- Good Help, directed by Rebekah Henderson and Lilah Park, won the Audience Award for documentary feature, while Pranav Bhasin's "We Were Here" (India) took the short-film audience award
- Mara Tasker's "The River" won Denver's local True Grit prize, and the juried short awards went to Altay Ulan Yang's "Hyena" (Grand Jury Award, China/U.S.), Bruce Tetsuya's "End of Things" (True Grit Short Film Award) and Lea Favre's Swiss student animation "Hunting" (Marilyn Marsh Saint-Veltri Award)
- Denver Film Festival sits in the regional-festival circuit the writer credits with keeping contenders visible: real-world audiences and often Oscar voters, as in Middleburg, Virginia, generate excitement and headlines between Cannes, TIFF, Telluride and Sundance
Why it matters: Denver's juried prize extends "La Bola Negra"'s run from Cannes in May through TIFF and London, while "I Play Rocky" took a second regional audience prize after Virginia with a November 20 wide release ahead. For "Whispers in May," a juried doc crown while still seeking distribution shows recognition can arrive before a release.
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