Taiwan International Documentary Festival unveils 2018 award nominees

2018/02/08

Award nominees for the upcoming Taiwan International Documentary Festival were unveiled Feb. 6 in Taipei City, spotlighting culturally significant and high-quality works from home and abroad.
 
 Organized by the Taiwan Film Institute under the Ministry of Culture, this year’s event attracted a record 2,445 submissions from 141 countries and territories. Up to 15 works were shortlisted to vie for grand and merit prizes in each of the main competition categories of International, Asian Vision and Taiwan at the May 4-13 festival.
 
 Wood Lin, TIDF program director, said the diversity of selections is underscored by Asian Vision category nominees from such countries as Armenia, Bangladesh, India, Qatar and Uzbekistan. The vibrant works will allow audiences to connect with unique and intriguing aspects of local and foreign cultural development, he added.
 
 Three Taiwan-produced films are among those in the running for International and Asian Vision honors at the 11th edition of the biennial event. “Small Talk” by Huang Hui-chen received a nomination in the former category, while “City of Jade” by Midi Zhao and “Goodnight and Goodbye” by Adon Wu are competing in the latter.
 
 Also nominated in the Taiwan section, “Small Talk” explores the relationship between director Huang and her lesbian mother Anu, a Taoist priestess. It won best documentary at the 2017 Teddy Award, a prize at the Berlin International Film Festival for movies on LGBT topics.
 
“City of Jade,” similarly shortlisted for the Taiwan prize, tells the story of the filmmaker’s older brother, a jade miner in Myanmar. The film depicting the struggles of poverty received a special mention at the 2017 Yamagata International Documentary Film Festival in Japan.
 
 Wu’s “Goodnight and Goodbye” is a sequel to his previous documentary “Swimming on the Highway.” Following from the 1998 work about a conversation and controversies between the filmmaker and an acquaintance, the director returns to his friend’s home two decades on with the aim of confronting their troubled past.
 
 First held in 1998, TIDF screens roughly 130 documentaries and attracts some 30,000 viewers. In addition to the three main competition categories, the festival also grants the Audience, Chinese Documentary and Next Generation awards.

Source: Taiwan Today (https://taiwantoday.tw/news.php?unit=18&post=129151)