(from Florence Luigi Noera with the kind collaboration of Valentina Vignoli – Photos are published courtesy of the Festival dei Popoli)

“The Buriti Flower” by João Salaviza and Renée Nader Messora, story of the fight for freedom of the indigenous Brazilian people, is the best documentary of the 64th Festival dei Popoli #FdP64

“The Buriti Flower” by João Salaviza and Renée Nader Messora (Portugal, Brazil, 2023) was presented at the last Cannes Film Festival in the Un Certain Regard section.

E’ the story of the indigenous Brazilian people of Krahô in the Amazon rainforest, continually threatened by the globalized Western world, but always guided by love for nature and the fight for freedom and for one's own survival, to win the Best Feature Film Award of the International Competition at the 64th Festival dei Popoli.

The prize (8.000 euro) was awarded by the international jury composed of director Nataša Urban (Serbia), by producer Alice Lemaire (Belgium) and by the curator and distributor Johannes Klein (Germany), the following reasons: “From the first scene, This film enchanted us. We immersed ourselves in the Krahô community, loving, suffering, dreaming with them, and their loss and struggle became ours. All the beauty and horror of the world are masterfully contained in this film. Not just politically relevant today, it is a timeless film that shows us the eternal repetition of violence and predation”.

“The edition that has just ended gave us great satisfaction – said Alessandro Stellino, artistic director of the Festival dei Popoli - not only for the public's response to the programming, with particular attention to thematic focuses and our special guests, but also for the intense participation in all the activities related to the market and the production of the documentary. The renewed space dedicated to the festival industry, Doc at Work, saw the presence of many representatives from the main international festivals and many Italian professionals in the sector, to further enhance the proposal of the projects in progress. In fact, the Festival dei Popoli intends to confirm its nature as a cinema laboratory of the future over time and in this sense the intense work aimed at involving the young generations with all the activities and screenings of the Popoli for Kids section should also be underlined & Teens. It is not only a question of confirming and strengthening the cultural proposal but also of laying the foundations so that the legacy of over sixty years of work of the festival produces new fruits in the years to come”.

The Award for Best Medium Film (4.000 euro) was awarded to “Stand Out My Sunlight” by Messaline Raverdy (Belgium, 2023) the following reasons: “Through a carefully crafted and edited film, the director transported us into the rich inner world of her friend Joseph, capturing the beauty in the chaos. The

The award for Best Italian Documentary (3.000 euro), assigned by the jury composed of the distributor and producer Raffaella Pontarelli; by director, producer and screenwriter Micol Roubini and the distributor Pietro Liberati, went to “Vista Mare” by Julia Gutweniger and Florian Kofler (Austria, Italy, 2023), which reveals little-known jobs behind the scenes of summer holidays along the Adriatic coast. This is the jury's motivation: “By adopting an unusual point of view on a reality before everyone's eyes, the authors manage to reveal the grotesque and paradoxical side of a world that under the sun appears to be fun and emotion. A world that reveals itself here as a cold and millimetric mechanism that cages, deceives, and is ultimately all-encompassing. An aseptic and analytical look that is never forgotten, also for its ferocious irony.”