‘The Native Dance,’ ‘Post Love’ Take Top Prizes at Thessaloniki Intl. Documentary Festival’s Industry Awards

variety.com:

Tara Karajica Egyptian director Alaa Dajani’s “The Native Dance,” a documentary that tells the story of Younis Abdallah and his comrades who were among the 300,000 peasants conscripted into the Egyptian Labor Corps in 1917, many of whom were dispatched to Europe to dig trenches for allied defense in World War I, took the top prize in the Pitching Forum of the Thessaloniki Intl.

Documentary Festival’s Agora Docs industry program, which wrapped Wednesday. The awards ceremony concluded a session that saw more than 400 professionals taking part both in-person and online in the Agora activities.

In “The Native Dance,” which is produced by Kesmat El Sayed and Laura Kloeckner (SEERA Films), the jury found “a film that promises a compelling visual approach combining archive material and animation, telling the story about the British forcing peasants from Egypt to dig trenches in Europe during WWI,” read the jury’s statement.

The top prize in the Doc in Progress section, the 2|35 Post-Production Company Award in post-production services, went to 2021 Thessaloniki Pitching Forum DAE Award winner “Post Love” from French director Alexis Taillant and producer Nadège Labé (Wendigo Films), that follows a group of elderly LGBTQ+ Parisians who are fighting for “the freedom to risk sex and love, to touch and be seen again in the wake of the pandemic that brought the mistreatment of the elderly to light.” The jury awarded the film because “[it] sheds a warm and caring light on an issue that goes beyond the LGBTQ+ experience to speak to all of us and the team approaches the film’s characters tenderly and with absolute respect.” A host of other prizes were awarded to some of the 14 projects selected for the Thessaloniki Intl.