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“Utama,” the debut feature from Bolivian filmmaker Alejandro Loayza Grisi, won best film in the Glocal Images International Competition section of Cyprus Film Days Intl. Film Festival, according to online news service Film New Europe.

The film, about an elderly Quechua couple living in harsh conditions in the Bolivian Atacama desert, premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in the World Cinema Dramatic Competition section, and won the Grand Jury Prize. Loayza Grisi was selected for the Berlinale’s Talent section this year.

The best director prize went to Serbia’s Milica Tomović for her feature debut “Celts,” which played at this year’s Berlin Film Festival. A special award in the Glocal Images competition went to North Macedonia’s Dina Duma for her feature debut “Sisterhood,” which competed at Karlovy Vary Film Festival in the East of West section last year.

Yianna Americanou’s feature debut “Dog,” which has been acquired by HBO Europe,...

The year is 1993, and Yugoslavia is dead. Long live the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, though that, too, will only last another 10 years. The Belgrade-based family at the heart of “Celts” doesn’t know that yet, though they kind of do: After years of political tumult that have left them all older, poorer and more cynical, they’ve learned to expect the worst of things while making the best of them. Millennial-age Serbian filmmaker Milica Tomović grew up in this era of discontented limbo, and her frayed, funny, perceptive debut feature is vibrantly colored by that lived experience. Structured around the spiraling birthday celebrations of an eight-year-old girl and the tensions it teases out in her extended family, this is a cleverly grafted feat of personal-as-political filmmaking, fueled equally by nostalgia for innocence and a wryer sense of good riddance to bad times.

A standout from this year’s Panorama program at Berlin,...

Sebastian Meise’s “Great Freedom,” a prison drama about a gay man repeatedly incarcerated under a draconian law outlawing homosexuality in West Germany, won the award for best feature film at the Sarajevo Film Festival.

The Austrian director took home the Heart of Sarajevo at Thursday night’s ceremony, while leading man Georg Friedrich won the award for best actor for a film that won the runner-up prize in Cannes’ Un Certain Regard sidebar. The prizes were handed out by a jury led by Serbian actress Jasna Đuričić and including American writer-director Mike Cahill, Hungarian director Lili Horvát, Vienna Film Festival artistic director Eva Sangiorgi, and Austrian Film Commission executive director Martin Schweighofer.

Serbia’s Milica Tomović was named best director for “Celts,” which follows three generations who converge at a child’s birthday party against the backdrop of the former Yugoslavia’s painful breakup. The trio of Flaka Latifi,...

Other winners included the three lead actresses of ’The Hill Where Lionesses Roar’.

Sebastian Miese’s Austrian-German drama Great Freedom has won the Sarajevo Film Festival’s top prize, the Heart of Sarajevo for best feature film.

The 2021 winners were announced at an awards ceremony last night (August 20). The film received its world premiere at Cannes last month, where it played in Un Certain Regard and won the jury prize.

Scroll down for full list of winners

The love story tracks the persecution of homosexuality in Germany over the decades following the Second World War. It is the Austrian director...

Following hot on the heels of the recently wrapped Berlin Film Festival, this year’s online edition of the Hong Kong Intl. Film & TV Market (FilMart) will include a host of buzzy titles and award winners gathered under the Europe! Umbrella, which brings together 29 European sales agents in a virtual pavilion organized by European Film Promotion (Efp).

Beta Cinema will be presenting two Berlin competition titles which already closed a flurry of deals during the European Film Market. Emmy Award-winning director Maria Schrader’s (“Unorthodox”) wry romcom “I’m Your Man” (pictured), starring Dan Stevens (“Downton Abbey”), Maren Eggert and Sandra Hueller (“Toni Erdmann”), earned stellar reviews and a leading performance Silver Bear for Eggert. The company is also repping the dark comedy “Next Door,” the directorial debut of German star Daniel Brühl, who plays a version of himself in the film.

Also with two Berlinale competition selections on offer, Films Boutique...

The European Film Promotion organization is poised to return to Hong Kong’s FilMart with a virtual booth that befits this year’s online-only edition of the film rights market. Its umbrella stand will host 29 smaller European sales agencies, including four newcomers.

One of those, the French sales company Reel Suspects, will be pitching “Bliss” by Germany’s Henrika Kull, which recently made its festival debut in the Panorama section of the Berlin film festival.

The other first-time participants are: Rise and Shine World Sales from Germany, which will be promoting the Austrian documentary “Vienna Symphony” by Iva Svarcova and Malte Ludin; Spain’s Feelsales with the Italian-German coproduction “Hong Kong, Ga Yau,” a documentary by Marco Di Noia; and Media Move from Poland, which will be looking to attract buyers’ interest in the Serbian drama “Loan Shark” by Nemanja Ceranic.

Other films which made recent Berlinale debuts are Maria Schrader...

The Berlin Film Festival has revealed 12 titles from 16 countries that will compete in the festival’s Encounters strand, including Denis Côté’s “Social Hygiene” from Canada, Alice Diop’s “We” from France, and Fern Silva’s “Rock Bottom Riser” from the U.S.

The selections also take in “As I Want” (Egypt/France/Norway/Palestine) by Samaher Alqadi; “Azor” (Switzerland/France/Argentina) by Andreas Fontana; “The Beta Test” (U.S./U.K.) by Jim Cummings, Pj McCabe; and “Bloodsuckers (Germany) by Julian Radlmaier.

Also competing will be “The Girl and the Spider” (Switzerland) by Ramon Zürcher, Silvan Zürcher; “District Terminal” (Iran/Germany) by Bardia Yadegari, Ehsan Mirhosseini; “Moon, 66 Questions” (Greece/France) by Jacqueline Lentzou; “The Scary of Sixty-First” (U.S.) by Dasha Nekrasova; and “Taste” (Vietnam/Singapore/France/Thailand/Germany/Taiwan) by Lê Bảo.

The Encounters strand supports new or innovative voices in cinema. A jury will choose winners for best film,...