‘If These Stones Could Talk,’ ‘Mailin’ Take Top Prizes at Thessaloniki Documentary Festival’s Industry Awards
variety.comChristopher Vourlias Palestinian director Hana Elias’ “If These Stones Could Talk,” which follows a Palestinian man’s return to his homeland to restore his family’s ancestral garden, and Argentine filmmaker María Silvia Esteve’s “Mailin,” about a woman’s painful struggle to overcome her childhood trauma, took the top prizes at the Thessaloniki Documentary Festival’s industry award ceremony Wednesday night.
During an emotionally charged conclusion to the festival’s Agora strand, in which several filmmakers voiced their strident support for Palestine and called for a ceasefire to the more than five-month-old Israel-Hamas war in Gaza, a tearful Elias took the stage alongside producer Asmahan Bkerat to receive the top prize in the Agora’s pitching forum, a €10,000 ($10,900) cash prize from the International Emerging Film Talents Assn. (IEFTA). “This film’s been happening for a long time, and there’s no hope right now.
But we’re so grateful for this award,” she said. “We’re grateful for everyone we’ve met here, and we want to see more Palestinian voices on stages like these.
We want to see all of them given opportunities to come and pitch their stories. Palestinians are the ones who need to be telling their stories right now. “I just like to remind everyone to remember this film, in this devastating moment, as we’re seeing people literally being ethnically cleansed and forced off their land and killed in the…thousands, we need to remember the beauty of the land that we’re trying to protect and the land that we’re trying to hold onto.
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