"THE QUEEN OF SILENCE" WINS DEUTSCHER KAMERAPREIS
The Deutscher Kamerapreis awards were given for the 25th time in Cologne. This year, the film "The Queen of Silence" by Agnieszka Zwiefka won two times. The documentary film was awarded for cinematography and editing.
Deutscher Kamerapreis is a German award, given for achievements in cinematography for television and film productions. During this edition, Aleksander Duraj won the award for cinematography in the film "The Queen of Silence." The jury justified its decision in the following way: "using the images, filled with dense atmosphere, the cameraman manages to achieve visual authenticity and insight into the lives of people living on the margins of society. (...) the film transcends the boundaries of a classic documentary film in order to include in it an additional quality: poetic quality!"
The Polish-German co-production was also appreciated for the editing, and the award went to Thomas Ernst and Hansjörg Weissbrich.
The film "The Queen of Silence" is a film telling the story of deaf and mute girl, 10 year-old Denisa, who lives on an illegal gypsy encampment, but also the story of the place itself, threatened with eviction. Like other children on the encampment, Denisa has never been to school, she can neither read nor write, and lives in extremely difficult conditions, without running water and constant access to electricity. In addition, she is also laughed at by her peers, who call her "the deaf one" or "the silly one," rarely using her name. However, Denisa lives in her own world. Since she found a box with Bollywood films among the rubbish, she finds escape from the everyday reality in them. The girl spends all her days watching Bollywood choreography and tries to imitate it. Because Denisa never learnt to speak, dance is her only language. Only by dancing she can give vent to her anger, show sadness or joy. In the film, two layers - the documentary, strictly observational one, and the musical one, inspired by Bollywood, smoothly intertwine with one another, creating one, consistent story.
"The Queen of Silence" was developed within the frames of the programmes DOK.Incubator, Dok.Restart and shown at the 3rd edition of Docs to go! The film's producer is Chilli Productions, and co-producers are ZDF, arte, Stefilm International, Odra Film and HBO Polska. The film was co-financed by Polish Film Institute, Creative Europe - Media and Mitteldeutsche Medienförderung
You can find more information about the awards on the website.