The Audience Awards generally bring out some interesting results, and 2021 was no exception.
The winner of best film went to our Surprise Film – The Collini Case with an astounding 42 out of 46 voters giving it 5 stars. We have had Surprise Films win the Audience Award in the past, but never with such a high score.
Questlove’s Summer of Soul took out Best Documentary; the Dexter Gordon story Round Midnight won best Retro/Classic; and the UK made Election Night was the best Independent.
We send out a huge thank you to everyone who voted for the films in the 29th Chichester International Film Festival. It gives the distributors an idea of how their film may perform in the future – especially for the Premieres – and it gives us an entertaining little competition throughout the Film Festival.
FROM THE ARTISTIC DIRECTOR:
What a surprise indeed, that our winning feature film was the Surprise Film: The Collini Case – the UK Premiere of a German film that has had little exposure since covid and virtually unknown to our UK audience.
The winning documentary Summer of Soul wowed our audience with its mixture of outstanding jazz and soul music combined with social comment.
With the winning retrospective film being Bernard Tavernier’s Round Midnight – probably the best fiction film made about jazz, there is clearly a growing appetite for jazz with the great success and high scores for Django, Jazz on a Summer’s Day, Billie and the 3 live jazz gigs
Neil Monaghan’s Election Night winning the best low budget independent film was another welcome surprise with its provoctative theme of extreme political debate morphing into horror tropes- and a lively debate ensued with the audience.
We are delighted that you all voted for over 120 films with such a wide number of subjects, fact and fiction, whch gives audiences, film makers, and the Festival team, such valuable feedback and insight.
Congratulations to the all the winning film makers!
Roger Gibson, Artistic director.
30 August 2021