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Dutch co-productions awarded in Cannes

Feathers and Babi Yar. Context receive prizes at Cannes Film Festival.

Feathers*, Omar El Zohairy’s comedic drama co-produced by Dutch production outfit Keplerfilm, has won big in Cannes. The Egyptian director’s film which world premiered in Cannes Critics’ Week has been honored with the Nespresso Grand Prize. Besides landing Critics' Week's top prize, Feathers has also received the FIPRESCI Award for Best First Feature in the Cannes parallel sections. The jurors stated that they have chosen the film "For its singular mix of comedy and tragedy, grotesque atmosphere and surreal representation of poverty".

Feathers tells the story of a passive mother whose life is completely dedicated to her husband and children. However, when a magic trick goes wrong at a birthday party and the authoritarian patriarch is turned into a chicken an avalanche of coincidental absurdities follow. The mother is forced to come to the fore and take care of the family while moving heaven and earth to get her husband back. Trying to survive, she goes through a rough and absurd transformation.
Feathers has been supported by the Netherlands Film Fund and is a co-production between France, Egypt, the Netherlands and Greece. Heretic Outrech are handling sales.

Sergei Loznitsa’s Babi Yar. Context has received the Special Jury Prize of the L'Oeil d'Or award for documentary films in Cannes. The L'Oeil d'Or prize, which was launched in 2015 by the French Society of Multimedia Authors (SCAM), is awarded each year to the best documentary presented in one of the sections of the Cannes Film Festival (Official Selection, Directors' Fortnight, Critics' Week and Cannes Classics).

Babi Yar. Context world premiered in Cannes' Special Screening section (Official Selection). The film is produced by Atoms & Void (The Netherlands) with the support of the Babyn Yar Holocaust Memorial Foundation (Ukraine). Based entirely on archive footage, the film reconstructs the events leading up to the massacre of 33,771 Jews in German occupied Kyiv in September 1941, while also looking at the aftermath of the tragedy.

*Feathers was supported by the HBF+NFF Co-Production Scheme

Source: SEE-NL