Labour Equals Freedom Wins ‘Palmera de Oro’ in Valencia

29. October 2006

The jury of the 17th Mediterranean film festival Mostra de Valencia, also represented by one of the most renowned Spanish directors – Jaime de Armiñán – decided to present the greatest award Palmera de Oro to Slovenian film Labour Equals Freedom directed by Damjan Kozole.

The film already received significant international award for Best Actor won by Peter Musevski on the last year’s Sarajevo Film Festival. Apart from the award itself, the director is to receive EUR 40,000. Besides the main award, the expert jury also awarded Damjan Kozole Best Director.

The Palmera de Plata (Silver Palm) Award and EUR 25,000 received Fleur d’oubli from Tunisia, and the Palmera de Bronce (Bronze Palm) Award and EUR 10,000 the Albanian Magic Eye.

The festival in Valencia is a lucky place for Slovenian film, as in 2001 Sašo Podgoršek won the Palmera de Oro for the film Sweet Dreams.

This autumn is full of awards for Slovenian films; the film Gravehopping received five more awards in October: three in the festival in the Hungarian Pecs; Best Male Actor for Gregor Bakovič, and Best Photography for Simon Tanšek. The film also received the Public Choice Award. Afterwards, the film went on to the Polish town of Torun, where it was awarded the Special Jury Award

The film was also prized the Zygmund Kalužynski Award, which is honoured to a director for selected, exceptional contribution to the film art either considering scene, musical, or visual motive. The jury decided that the scene of funeral with the car in the film Gravehopping directed by Jan Cvitkovič was the best.

The abovementioned awards are 20th and 21st for Gravehopping.