‘From the Main Square,’ a ‘Collage of Urban Absurdities,’ Wins Top Prize at Paris’ NewImages
variety.comBen Croll An irreverent fable that imagines a civilization’s rise, fracture and fall, Pedro Harres’ “From the Main Square” took top honors at the NewImages Festival on Friday, claiming the festival’s Grand Prize, which came with €6,000 ($6,597) in prize money.
Born in Brazil and based in Berlin, Harres channeled his frustrations and heartache about his native country into a tragicomic frenzy, orchestrating a 360-degree symphony of animated antics, human folly, and shocking bursts of violence that follows an allegorical country as it speed-runs toward oblivion.
The filmmaker described the project as “a collage of urban absurdities, sometimes funny, sometimes brutal, that arise in societies in the process of political polarization and environmental collapse.” Produced at the Film University Babelsberg, the interactive animated project also won the Grand Jury Prize at last year’s Venice Immersive, and collected additional honors at additional festivals in Jeddah, Thessaloniki, Montreal and Kaohsiung, among others.
This year’s NewImages jury included XR journalist Kent Bye, European Creators’ Lab head Astrid Kahmke, French musician Rob Coudert, and Tumo CEO Marie Lou Papazian, while students at the Tumo Center for Creative Technologies school created the trophies themselves.
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