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Audience Favorite
Awards Announced for 15th Palm Beach Jewish Film
Festival
In one of the closest
audience ballots ever, two films emerged as Audience
Favorites:
Walk on Water,
directed by Eytan Fox who attended the screening,
was voted Best Feature Film. The Israeli thriller
about a Mussed agent who sets out to track a Nazi
criminal and winds up marrying his granddaughter and
becoming friends with his gay grandson will be
released theatrically later this winter by IDP
Films.
Hiding and Seeking,
directed by Menachem Datum who also visited the
festival, was voted Best Documentary Film. In this
film about tolerance, gratitude and coming to terms
with the past, a modern Orthodox father takes his
ultra-Orthodox sons back to Poland to learn about
the farmers who saved their grandfather. The doc won
the Jewish Experience prize at the Jerusalem
International Film Festival in 2004 and has been
nominated for the 2005 Independent Spirit Award.
“This year’s audience was blessed with a full plate
of films to see and chose from. In the feature film
category, Wondrous Oblivion and Turn Left At The End
of the World were close runner-ups and in the
documentary category Imaginary Witness: Hollywood
and the Holocaust and Watermarks were also close.
Both winners Walk on Water and Hiding and Seeking
won by less than one-tenth of a point,” says Karen
Davis, PBJFF director |
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My
Architect, A riveting narrative about one man’s
search to know the hidden heart of his father, was
voted Best Documentary and James Journey to Jerusalem,
a charming fable about the realities of modern
economics in the Holy Land, was voted Best Feature.
"We
are delighted to initiate our Audience Favorite Awards
this year because it really encourages filmmakers to
participate in the Palm Beach Jewish Film
Festival,"
says Karen Davis, executive director. "We hope
someone in our audience will make it possible in the
future to give out cash prizes the way many
international film festivals do, but this is a
start."
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