28e FESTIVAL INTERNATIONAL DU FILM D’AMIENS

PALMARÈS DU 28e FESTIVAL INTERNATIONAL DU FILM D’AMIENS

Le 28e Festival international du film d’Amiens s’est tenu du 7 au 16 novembre 2008. Plus de trois cents films de courts et longs métrages, fictions et documentaires, ont été présentés à plus de 66 000 spectateurs à Amiens et en Picardie.

Prix spécial du jury pour le long métrage

DESIERTO ADENTRO de Rodrigo Plá (Mexique, 2008)

GOLDEN GOOSE AWARD

Mexican film wins Golden Goose Award

"Desierto Adentro" (The Desert Within), the 2008 film by Mexican filmmaker Rodrigo Pla, has won the top prize at this year's Golden Goose International Film Competition in the eastern province of Kars.

The competition, held on the sidelines of an ongoing traveling festival of European films, "Festival on Wheels," wrapped up its third edition Thursday with an awards ceremony at the Kars Şehir Cinema, the Anatolia news agency reported.

"The Desert Within," written, directed and produced by Pla, follows the story of a religious man who dedicates his life to building a church in order to redeem himself in God's eyes, fearing his children will fall into evil. It won the Golden Goose Award for best film, beating eight other contenders, including Andreas Dresen's "Wolke 9" (Cloud 9), Christophe Van Rompaey's "Aanrijding In Moscou" (Moscow, Belgium), Aida Begic's "Snijeg" (Snow), Steve McQueen's "Hunger," Fernando Eimbcke's "Lake Tahoe," Goran Markovic's "Turneja" (The Tour) and Mika Kaurismäki's "Three Wise Men."

Zagreb Film Festival

Special Mention-Full Length Film went to ‘The Desert Within’ by Rodrigo Pla,
“…because of scale, inventiveness and surprising maturity with which this first time film maker has embraced a powerful and epic tale of a soul’s journey to redemption. The grittiness of the world that he portrays and the hardship that these characters endure is compelling and has struck a chord with us...”

Rodrigo Pla's "The Desert Within" ("Desierto Adentro") is a powerful tale about the obsessive pursuit of redemption. The movie has epic character, in which it issues faith and mainstream conscience presented with such dynamics and intensity. There are frequent religious references in the film but not really religion. In this film Plá brings spiritual intensity, leaving sense of the powers of deep faith. At the end, this ambitious work, this tragic figure of Shakespearean proportions Pla ends with the Nietzsche epigraph from which it draws its title: "The desert grows, and woe to him who conceals the desert within him..."