Leonard Retel Helmrich's State of the stars is a two-time winner of the Amsterdam documentary festival IDFA. At the awards ceremony at the Tuschinski theatre, it was announced that this dynamic and poetic portrait of a poor Indonesian family not only won the VPRO IDFA Award for best feature-length documentary, but was also chosen (by another jury) as the best of the Dutch competition.
State of the stars was the opening film of IDFA this year. With the Position of the moon Retel Helmrich had also won the top prize at IDFA in 2004.
Of course State of the stars a wonderful film that fully deserves such an award, yet you also get a bit of a feeling now that perhaps the competition was not too fierce. At least that goes for the two other nominees for the VPRO IDFA Award, Holy Wars, on the startling encounter between a Christian and Islamic fundamentalist, and Marathon Boy, about a little boy who ran marathons at the age of four. These two may have the most startling twist and the most shocking denouement respectively, but in terms of cinematic feel, they cannot match Retel Helmrich.
The jury further awarded a special jury prize to You Don't Like the Truth - 4 Days Inside Guántanamo.
In the public's preferred list came State of the stars in seventh place. The audience award was for Waste Land by Lucy Walker, about photographer Vik Muniz who creates an artwork in collaboration with rubbish collectors at the world's largest landfill in Rio de Janeiro.
There was more Dutch success. Boris Gerrets received the award for best medium-length documentary. His mobile phone-filmed People I Could Have Been and Maybe Am is a bold project in which he tries to break through the wall of loneliness in a big city with the camera.
The full list of prices can be found on the website www.idfa.nl.
The festival further announced that the number of visits rose again, from 165,000 in 2009 to (by conservative estimate) 180,000 this year.
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