Taiwanese director Julian Chou’s “Blind Love,” a drama a couple of delicate teenager who discovers the key affair between his mom and a mysterious girl, gained the highest prize on the seventh Joburg Movie Competition on Saturday.

Chou’s sophomore characteristic, which premiered within the Tiger competitors on the Rotterdam Intl. Movie Competition, gained the jury’s reward for its “fearless and courageous voice whose viewpoint is important.” 

In a pre-recorded video message, Chou mentioned she was “honored and humbled” to obtain the competition’s prime prize and paid tribute to her fellow filmmakers whose “unimaginable work has introduced such particular vitality and inspiration to the world.” The director added that she would “maintain working more durable to show this honor into extra significant movies.”

The award capped off a charged evening during which a number of filmmakers harassed the significance for Africans to wrest again management of their very own tales. It was a message most pointedly pushed residence by director Vusi Africa, who – whereas accepting the award for finest African movie for “Comfortable: The True Story of Comfortable Sindane” – referred to as on his fellow South African filmmakers to fight “false narratives” — an allusion to U.S. President Donald Trump’s strongly disputed allegations of a “genocide” being perpetrated on white South African farmers.

“We’re residing in a vital time proper now, the place it will be important that we inform the South African story within the midst of all these false narratives round South Africa which can be revolving all over the world. It’s critically essential that we’re deliberate about discovering the South African narrative,” Africa mentioned, drawing a spherical of applause.

“To everyone who’s within the room, all of us have a accountability to not negate our place as storytellers, as a result of as soon as we negate our place as storytellers, we’re opening the door to all of the false narratives which can be at the moment dominating. Can all of us be patriotic residents of this nation and defend this nation with the whole lot that we’ve?”

Later within the night, Oscar-nominated Haitian filmmaker Raoul Peck, who gained the award for finest documentary for “Ernest Cole: Misplaced and Discovered,” paid tribute to the trailblazing photographer who chronicled on a regular basis life below apartheid, drawing the world’s consideration to the evils of the racist South African regime earlier than dying a lonely life in exile.

“We couldn’t have a greater welcome again for…brother and comrade Ernest Cole,” mentioned Peck. “He left this nation at 26 years previous and died overseas, the place he lived half of his life, and he was by no means in a position to come again residence. I feel it’s the fitting time for this movie to make his nation conscious of who he was and who he’s and the legacy that he leaves for the following technology.”

A particular point out within the documentary class went to director Eloïse King for “The Shadow Students.” The award for finest modifying went to Dominican filmmaker Johanne Gomez Terrero’s “Sugar Island,” and the award for finest brief movie went to Phumi Morare’s “Why the Cattle Wait.” The competition’s Younger Voices award, in the meantime, went to the movie “Checkmate,” with Joburg Movie Competition head Timothy Mangwedi taking the chance to reaffirm the fest’s help for younger filmmakers.

“One among our missions on the Joburg Movie Competition is to nurture rising expertise. It’s no small feat to step into the world of cinema for these younger creatives, dealing with numerous obstacles alongside the best way,” mentioned Mangwedi. “All of the up-and-coming filmmakers, we wish you to know that we see you. We see your ardour. We hear your voices. And we stand able to help your movies.”

An emotional capstone to the ceremony got here with the presentation of a Particular Recognition Award to pioneering South African producer Mfundi Vundla, finest generally known as the creator and govt producer of the groundbreaking telenovela “Generations.”

Throughout his acceptance speech, the 78-year-old trade icon recalled getting into the workplaces of public broadcaster SABC in 1993, when the top of the station’s TV division requested him to jot down a telenovela for the channel because the nation transitioned into a brand new period of democratic rule. 

Impressed by the various Black entrepreneurs who failed to attain success below the racist apartheid regime, Vundla wished to make a sequence “to honor these pioneers in Black enterprise as symbols of excellence.” The present was set in an promoting trade “the place Black individuals are in control of their very own destinies and create their very own narratives,” he mentioned.

“‘Generations’ wouldn’t have occurred had it not been for democracy — it was very a lot a product of democracy,” Vundla mentioned. “Earlier than ‘Generations,’ within the SABC, the [white] Afrikaners had been writing tales for us, and the Africans had been simply there to translate tales by different folks for us.”

The sequence would run for greater than 20 years on SABC earlier than relaunching as “Generations: The Legacy” in 2014, making it the longest-running cleaning soap opera on South African tv.

The Joburg Movie Competition runs March 11 – 16.