‘My Stolen Planet’ Wins Thessaloniki Documentary Festival After Emotionally Charged Week of Protest, Defiance
variety.comChristopher Vourlias Iranian filmmaker Farahnaz Sharifi‘s “My Stolen Planet,” an intimate family portrait of life during Iran’s 1979 Islamic revolution, won the Golden Alexander at the Thessaloniki Documentary Festival on Sunday, bringing a close to an emotional and politically charged week in Greece’s second city.
Using both the director’s personal archives and 8mm recordings of strangers’ lives, the film — which world premiered in the Berlin Film Festival’s Panorama strand — uses an essayistic style to present the joy and vitality of life in Tehran in the 1970s, in contrast with the oppression imposed on the Iranian people by the country’s hardline regime.
The Silver Alexander award went to Lidia Duda’s documentary “Forest,” which premiered in Thessaloniki. The film focuses on a Polish family living next to the oldest forest in Europe, trying to create a safe haven for their children, until they begin to notice refugees stranded in the wilderness, unwelcome both in Poland and neighboring Belarus.
A Jury Special Mention went to “Stray Bodies,” from Greek filmmaker Elina Psykou, which sparked a firestorm of protest in Greece ahead of its premiere.
Read more on variety.com