A Croatian drama, The Constitution, has won three of the main awards at this year’s Raindance Film Festival.

At a ceremony at the May Fair Hotel, it was named Best Film, won Best Screenplay and one of its stars, Nebojša Glogovac, won the prize for Best Performance, for a double-role in a film about four people who live in the same building but have little to do with each other, because of differences in their religious backgrounds, social standing and sexual preferences.

The Best Director award went to Zachary Cotler and Magdalena Zyzak for Maya Dardel, about an author who claims on radio that she plans to end her life and invites male writers to compete to become the executor of her estate.

British director Jason Wingard won the Best UK Feature award for In Another Life, about a Syrian refugee at the Calais jungle camp trying to join his wife across the Channel.

The Best Documentary prize went to River Blue: Can Fashion Save The Planet, which follows the conservationist Mark Angelo has he travels the world by river.

The Algerian actress Rayhana Obermeyer was given the Discovery Award for the Best Debut Feature for I Still Hide to Smoke, set in a women’s massage parlour during the Algerian Civil War in the mid 1990s.

The jurors, who selected the winners, included the actors Christopher Ecclestone, Sean Bean, Jack O’Connell, Ewen Bremner and Nicholas Lyndhurst, the Descent and Centurion director Neil Marshall and Crying Game and Brimstone producer Nik Powell.

The Dominican Republic film Peaches, by Hector Valdez, was named the Film of the Festival, by the founder of Raindance, Elliot Grove, who said, “The film cleverly interweaves style and synthesised music rooted firmly in the 1970s to create a relentlessly upbeat movie with characters that are hilariously oblivious to the complexities of basic morality.”

Part of Valdez’s prize is to direct next year’s Raindance Festival trailer.

The Lock Stock and Sherlock director Guy Ritchie was honoured with the second annual Auteur Award and this year’s festival also marked the first year that Raindance handed out a set of awards for Virtual Reality films.

 

HERE IS THE FULL LIST OF WINNERS 

Best Film – The Constitution 
Best Director – Zachary Cotler and Magdalena Zyzak (Maya Dardel)
Best Performance – Nebojša Glogovac (The Constitution)
Best Screenplay – Rajko Grlc and Ante Tomic (The Constitution)
Best UK Feature – In Another Life
Best Documentary Feature – RiverBlue: Can Fashion Save The Planet?
Special Jury Mention For Best Documentary Feature – The Family I Had
Discovery Award – I Still Hide To Smoke
Film of the Festival Award – Peaches
Best Short of the Festival– Game
Special Jury Mention For Best Short of the Festival – Viola, Franca
Best UK Short– Cla’am
Best Documentary Short – Riders of the Well of Death
Best Animation Short – Flutter
Best Music Video – Terror

RAINDANCE VRX AWARDS

Best Interactive Narrative VR Experience – Manifest 99

Best Mobile Interactive VR Experience – Virtual Virtual Reality

Best Cinematic Narrative VR Experience – Alteration

Best Documentary VR Experience – First Impressions

Best Animation VR Experience – Dear Angelica

Best Music VR Experience – Beethoven’s Fifth

Best Branded VR Experience – The Chainsmokers: Paris

Best Sensual VR Experience – Through You

Best Social Impact VR Experience – Munduruku: The Fight to Defend the Heart of the Amazon,

Best Sound Design VR Experience – Reeps One: Does Not Exist

Special Prize: Best Storytelling in Virtual Reality – Arden’s Wake