Last night we celebrated at the awards ceremony of the 12th edition of the Sam Spiegel International Film Lab:
The Sam Spiegel International Film Lab $50,000 Grand Prize, donated by the Beracha Foundation was awarded to The Good Fence, by Hillel Rate, producer Lev Orlov. The jury headed by Roland Teichmann, CEO of the Austrian Film Institute, stated “The Good Fence portrays the conflicted relationship between a father and son in the settlements, in the wake of a family tragedy. It avoids simple answers while looking unblinkingly at the most complex issues of our time".
The Sam Spiegel International Film Lab Emerging Filmmaker Award in the amount of $20,000 was granted to Who Lives There, by Omer Ben-David, Vera Grinblat, producer Estee Meckleberg, Israel. The jury statement read:“Through an unforgettable portrait of an adolescent learning to navigate the social corridors of her religious boarding school, Who Lives There explores the sacrifices we sometimes must make in the course of defending ourselves, and how we recover from them".
We want to thank our dear partners: Beracha Foundation; the Rothschild Foundation; the Israel Film Fund, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs; the Embassy of Hungary in Israel; the French Embassy and French Institute; Carol Polakoff; and our constant supporters, the Sam Spiegel Estate.