“THE TOWN THAT DROVE AWAY” AWARDED AT VISIONS DU RÉEL
The documentary by Grzegorz Piekarski and Natalia Pietsch has been awarded the Special Youth Jury Award for a Medium Length Film.
Visions du Reél has been organised in the Swiss city of Nyon since 1969. In its early days, it mainly featured Swiss films and productions from the Eastern Bloc, as they were very difficult for Western European audiences to see. Today, Visions du Reél is one of the largest documentary film festivals in Europe.
The debut documentary by Grzegorz Piekarski and Natalia Pietsch, “The Town That Drove Away”, has been awarded the Special Youth Jury Prize for Best Medium-Length Film at the prestigious Visions du Réel festival in Nyon, Switzerland. It marks a powerful entrance onto the international documentary scene for the emerging Polish filmmakers.
The film centers on the residents of the Kurdish town of Hasankeyf, whose lives are upended by the construction of a dam. With striking sensitivity, the directors document the plight of a community being displaced by vast political and economic forces. Set against the austere and majestic landscapes of south-east Anatolia, the film unfolds as a poignant meditation on loss and the enduring strength of human dignity. For Piekarski and Pietsch, this is not only a successful debut – it is also a strong statement that new, distinctive voices from Poland have arrived on the European documentary stage.
You can find the full list of all winning films here.