JURY’S AWARD
GOOGOOSH, MADE OF FIRE
Allemagne • 2024 • 94’ • Vostf • Niloufar Taghizadeh
The singer and actress Googoosh has been a true icon of Iranian pop culture since the 1970s. She inspired a new style of music by blending Persian poetry with blues, jazz, rock, and disco, creating songs that became international hits. In 1980, under Khomeini’s regime, she was placed under house arrest in Tehran and banned from performing, marking a brutal pause in her career. This documentary traces her tumultuous life, her exile, and her triumphant return to the international stage in 2000. After the death of Mahsa Amini in 2022, while in the custody of the morality police, Googoosh publicly showed her support for the Iranian youth rebelling against the regime. The director presents an intimate portrait of a woman committed to fighting against the oppression of women and in the struggle for freedom. A poignant testimony to the history and cultural heritage of Iran.
PUBLIC’S AWARD
OMAR & CEDRIC : IIF THIS EVER GETS WEIRD
Allemagne • 2023 • 127’ • VOSTF • Nicolas Jack Davies
The untold story of the deep friendship between Omar Rodríguez-López and Cedric Bixler-Zavala, a Texan alternative rock duo active since 1993. Omar, a young Puerto Rican exile, had a video camera and dreamed of becoming a filmmaker. From these hundreds of hours shot over 40 years, Nicolas Davies created an exceptional collage. The result is a dreamlike film with a lo-fi, almost psychedelic ambience, tackling the great themes of tragedy through the torments of the duo’s lives: success, addiction, betrayal, forgiveness, mourning, redemption. An exploration of the birth of The Mars Volta, after the break-up of At the Drive-In, while the evil shadow of Jeremy Ward continued to loom large.
A conceptual documentary, not just for fans, on the soundtrack of a generation. The story of a long and unfailing friendship between two artists who never abandoned their artistic integrity in the face of celebrity.
YOUNG JURY’S AWARD
PUSSY ROT : RAGE AGAINST POUTINE
France • 2023 • 52’ • VF • Denis Sneguirev
Katya (Ekaterina Samoutsevitch), Nadya (Nadejda Tolokonnikova) and Macha (Maria Alekhina) founded the Pussy Riot collective in Moscow in 2011. They were among the first to rise up and take numerous actions against Vladimir Putin. Their weapons? Music, powerful words and performance art.
Later enlarged to fifteen members, this group of women fights for LGBT and women’s rights. Through their performances, they bring down the masks by revealing the predatory nature of the Russian state. Pursued, imprisoned, forced into exile, they never gave up.
After a period of silence, they took up their fight again, this time in support of Ukraine. The documentary – conceived by a Russian director living in France – mixes archives and exclusive interviews, navigates between past and present, and retraces their activist journeys.