MIRUNA WINS THE GRAND PRIX IN GEORGIA

We got to know the winners of Georgia's Batumi International Art-House Festival, seeing its eighth edition this year. Among the films awarded is "Miruna", a student fiction film directed by Piotr Sułkowski.

As always, the films admitted to the festival were judged by three teams of jurors and assigned to one of three categories – feature length fiction films, documentaries and short films. In the course of the festival, as many as four films coming from Polish filmmakers were presented to the audience – apart from the above mentioned “Miruna” by Sułkowski this includes another student project, “The Mother” by Łukasz Ostalski, as well as two documentary films – Wiktora Szymańska's “The Man Who Made Angels Fly” and Janusz Mrozowski's “Bad Boy - High Security Cell”.

A five-member jury headed by a Georgian director Alexander Rekhviashvili have decided to award Piotr Sułkowski's “Miruna” with the Grand Prix for Best Short Film. This year's choice for the short film contest featured 24 films coming from all across the globe, each of under 35 minutes in length.

The film that won Sułkowski the prize is a story of stranger meets stranger. Upset after a fight with her lover, a girl gets in the car of a stranger. As they travel together, a feeling of mutual fascination arises and eventually brings the man to satisfy his obsessive desires. The film was produced by the Lodz Film School and its international promotion is supported by the Krakow Film Foundation. “Miruna” is yet to battle for prizes at the Naoussa festival, held in Greece later this month, and will also be shown at October's festivals in Bern and Atlanta.

Apart from the three competitive sections, the festival in Batumi also features different thematic programmes, such as a series devoted to the cinema of the Silk Road Countries, retrospectives of works by some of the great masters or sections presenting films by jurors for the festival. Since 2011, the event is also accompanied by the Industry Meetings – where Georgian filmmakers meet professionals delegated by international film industry institutions. The  Batumi International Art-House Festival has been held annually since 2006.

The complete list of the winning films and additional information on the festival may be found at BIAFF's official website