The Tunisian film “The Red Road,” directed by Lotfi Ashour, won the Golden Yusr Award for Best Feature Film, Thursday, at the Red Sea Film Festival Awards Ceremony, where honorary awards were distributed to Viola Davis and Priyanka Chopra Jonas. Sarah Jessica Parker, Dev Patel, John Boyega and Nick Jonas were among the guest stars.
Johnny Depp’s “Modi, Three Days on the Wing of Madness” was screened as the festival’s closing screening, with Depp in attendance along with star Riccardo Scamarcio.
“The Red Road,” described as “a journey into the wounded psyche of a child in a war zone,” is Ashour’s third feature film. It had its world premiere at the Locarno Film Festival. The Golden Yusr comes with a cash prize of $100,000.
Ashour also won the Red Sea Yusr Award for Best Director, which is worth $10,000.
The awards were presented by a specialized jury headed by its president, Spike Lee, and composed of Minnie Driver, Daniel Dae Kim, Abu Bakr Shawqi, and Tuba Büyüküstün.
The Silver Yusr Award for Feature Film, which carries a prize of $30,000, was won by the refugee film “To an Unknown Land,” inspired by Martin Scorsese, directed by Palestinian-Danish director Mahdi Fleifel. The film premiered at the Directors’ Fortnight at Cannes.
The film’s hero, Mahmoud Bakri, won the Best Actor award, while the Best Actress award went to Maryam Sharif for the film “Snow White.”
Uday Rashid won the Al-Yusr Award for the screenplay and a prize of $10,000 for the film “Songs of Adam.”
The Al-Yusr Award for Cinematic Achievement was won by the film “To Kill a Mongolian Horse” by director Tao Chiu, and the Al-Yusr Jury Prize, worth $10,000, went to “Seeking Sanctuary for Mr. Rambo” by director Khaled Mansour.
The festival and its market had a new headquarters this year in the historic Al-Balad district in Jeddah. The festival’s list includes 122 films from 85 countries. 50% of the films had world or international premieres, with 46 films having world premieres, 15 international premieres, and 53 regional premieres in the Middle East and North Africa, according to Shivani Pandya Malhotra, Managing Director of The Red Sea Company.
“Over the past eight days, we have celebrated the transformative power of cinema and championed diverse narratives from around the world,” said Jomana Al-Rasheed, President of the Red Sea Film Foundation.
Other awards included the $10,000 Al Sharq Award for Best Documentary Film in the competition for Santiago Mazar’s “State of Silence,” the Chopard Award for Emerging Saudi Talent, which went to Rula Dakhila, and the AlUla Audience Award for International Film, which went to Lawrence’s “Little Jaffna.” Valen, and the AlUla Movie Audience Award for a Saudi Film, which came in the amount of $50,000. The award went to the film “Hubal” by director Abdulaziz Al-Shalahi.
As for the Golden Yusr Award for Best Short Film, it was won by the film “Hatch” directed by Ali Reza Kazempour and Banta Musleh. The prize was worth $25,000. As for the Silver Yusr Award for Short Film, and a prize of $12,500, it went to the film “Al-Azar” by director Baeza Hailu Lama.