Zalava wins Grand Prize of Intl Film Critics’ Week

It’s a wrap for the 2021 Venice’s International Film Critics’ Week, an independent and parallel section organized by the National Union of Italian Film Critics (SNCCI) as an integral part of the Venice International Film Festival.

This year’s edition saw the triumph of Arsalan Amiri’s debut feature Zalava, an Iranian film set in the titular small village in 1978, wherein villagers claim that a demon is among them, Cineuropa reported.

The movie received the International Film Critics’ Week Grand Prize along with the section’s dedicated FIPRESCI Award.

In their accompanying statement, jurors Claudio Cupellini, Vanja Kaludjercic and Sandrine Marques praised the director’s “fresh talent” along with his “playful cinematic language” and its clear call against “superstition and ignorance.”

Several minor accolades were bestowed upon other European productions and co-productions. In detail, the Verona film Club Award went to Gàbor Fabricius’ odyssey of “political psychiatry” Erasing Frank , the Award for Best Technical Contribution to Helena Girón and Samuel M.

Delgado’s Spanish-Colombian co-production They Carry Death and the brand-new special prize for women filmmakers under 40 (created in honor of late documentarian Valentina Pedicini) to Ekaterina Selenkina’s Detours.

Finally, Gianluca Matarrese’s The Last Chapter won the Queer Lion Award.

RHM/PR