"SISTERS" WIN IN CROATIA
The film by Michał Hytroś triumphs at an international festival once again. This time, it won the best documentary film award at the Croatian STIFF.
The Student International Film Festival in Rijeka was held for the sixth time. This year, the viewers could watch as many as 45 films in the animated, documentary and feature film sections. The jury of the documentary film competition, consisting of Morana Ikić Komljenović, Antigoni Papantoni and Maja Stojić decided that it was the film "Sisters" that won the main award for "a subtle and intimate portrait of everyday life in a Polish convent where aged nuns share their days, lives and fears with tenderness, tolerance and respect.. This discrete film offers exclusive insight and portrays old age from a different perspective immersing the audience in a life we rarely get to see."
The award-winning film is set behind a huge, 800-year-old wall, in the oldest enclosed nunnery in Poland - the Benedictine nunnery in Staniątki near Krakow. This is where 12 sisters live, the average age of whom is 70. Despite their old age and the world outside the wall, changing at a mad pace, every day they try to subordinate their lives to the rule "ORA et LABORA," invented over 10 centuries ago. Our protagonists, the sisters Anuncjata and Benedykta (40 years in the nunnery), with their characteristic charm, introduce us to the world behind the wall, telling us about their lives and the decisions which they made. They show us the world of the convent with all its shades, totally devoid of stereotypes, often touching and amusing at the same time. This is a film about silence told in a particularly loud way.
You can find the full list of the award-winning films on the festival's official website.