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Israeli comedian Noam Shuster-Eliassi and director Amber Fares took home the Golden Alexander at the 27th Thessaloniki International Documentary Festival for “Coexistence, My Ass!,” a film that follows Shuster-Eliassi’s sharp, satirical approach to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The win secures the film’s eligibility for Academy Award consideration in the Best Documentary Feature category.

The Thessaloniki jury praised the documentary’s construction, calling it a “fearless challenge to every taboo in the region,” noting how Shuster-Eliassi’s humor allows audiences to confront deep-seated biases. The comedian, whose one-woman show serves as the foundation for the film, uses her multilingual fluency in Arabic and Hebrew to highlight the contradictions of the conflict and the limits of coexistence in Israel. During her acceptance speech, she reflected on her family’s activist background, acknowledging her father, who was imprisoned for refusing military service in the occupied Palestinian territories.

Shuster-Eliassi also referenced the recent...

Berlin-based Rise and Shine World Sales has acquired international rights to Weronika Mliczewska’s “Child of Dust,” a documentary produced by “The Stringer” director Bao Nguyen which has its world premiere in the main international competition of the Thessaloniki Intl. Documentary Festival.

Mliczewska’s sophomore feature follows Sang, one of countless children left behind by American soldiers after the Vietnam War. Stigmatized and abandoned, he spends a lifetime longing for the father he never had. When he unexpectedly locates his gravely ill father in the U.S., he’s determined to meet him, even at the heavy cost of leaving his own family behind in Vietnam.

In an unfamiliar land, Sang’s dream of belonging clashes with an unexpected reality, as he finds himself an outsider both in American society and within a family that never knew he existed. But in the search for his father, he discovers something even...