70th BFI London Film Festival Winners Announced: 'Imperium' Takes Best Film, Thai Debut '9 Temples to Heaven' Wins First Feature Award
LONDON — The 70th BFI London Film Festival announced its LFF Awards on closing day, October 18. The Best Film Award in Official Competition went to Imperium, directed by Sergei Loznitsa; the Sutherland Award in the First Feature Competition went to 9 Temples to Heaven, the fiction debut of Thai director Sompot Chidgasornpongse; the Grierson Award in the Documentary Competition went to Asmahan Bkerat's Concrete Land; and the Short Film Award went to Rahul Roye's Aman.
Imperium continues Loznitsa's work of reframing history through archival film, drawing on footage shot by Italian cameramen in the Soviet Union in the early 1970s. The Official Competition jury, presided over by Sam Pollard, called the film “richly evocative and emotionally engaging on all levels,” offering a visually arresting perspective on life before the Soviet Union broke apart. 9 Temples to Heaven blends gentle humour with themes of family, faith and the cycles of life, and was praised by the First Feature jury as visually outstanding, spiritual and meditative. Concrete Land is an intimate portrait of a mixed-race family in Jordan resisting displacement and cultural erasure, while Aman follows a trans man who discovers he is pregnant on the eve of gender-affirming surgery; Aman is available to watch free on BFI Player until October 25.
The festival ran October 7-18. Voting for the Audience Awards closes on October 21, with the Best Feature Film and Best British Discovery winners to be announced in due course.
Published by GSM · USA (original Chinese edition)
Photo: 伦敦皇家节日音乐厅（伦敦电影节庆典放映场地）实景，CC BY 2.0，Wikimedia Commons
