The 18th edition of Play-Doc, the International Documentary Festival in Tui announces it’s awards. Terra que marca, by the young Portuguese director Raul Domingues, had obtained Play-Doc Prize 2022 in the international feature film competition.

 The jury of the international feature and short film competitions composed of Émilie Cauquy, head of HENRI, the video-on-demand platform of the Cinémathèque française; Haden Guest, director of the Harvard Film Archive; and Andrea Meneghelli, curator of the film collections of Cineteca di Bologna, has decided to award the prize for this 18th edition to «an ecologically sensitive and beautifully made film, Terra, which marks a poetic commitment to the soil and the earth that looks back to Hesiod and also looks forward, with optimism, in search of a more sustainable relationship with the fragile planet we are lucky enough to inhabit».

 It also decided to award a special mention to Kind Hearts by Olivia Rochette & Gerard-Jan Claes «for the delicate balance between narrative and real life, which fosters a step-by-step process of intimacy between the audience and the characters on screen, embracing without premeditation the unpredictability of life as a driving force».

 In the international short film competition, the jury decided to award the film Caught In The Rain by Elie Maissin & Mieriën Coppens «because we are always close to indifference and to leaving people in the rubble of perpetual condemnation, in misery, it is important to put a price on this film. Its symbolism will remain in our minds for a long time, just like the shot from the window with the broken glass».

 In addition, they also wanted to recognise with a special mention «a purely cinematographic camera work, or kammerspiel, elaborated from literary ghosts, of light and shadow, and guided by the wisdom of a master of cinema». The special mention goes to Jean-Claude Rousseau’s Le tombeau de Kafka.

Play-Doc’s official list of winners is completed with the award in the Galician competitive section. The jury, made up of Ramiro Ledo, founder and director of the distribution company Atalante; Eloísa Suárez, film and music programmer at the Goethe-Institut Madrid; and Gemma Vidal, executive producer at Atresmedia Cine, decided to award Carla Andrade’s Ningún río me protexe de mín, «the film finds home in the most remote places, combining a familiar voice with images from other geographical locations and a montage capable of summoning the emotion of the intimate through the formal exploration of plasticity». 

In the Galician competition, the jury also wanted to give a special mention to the film Un cielo impasible by David Varela «for its historical re-staging of a common past and for placing an exercise in democratic practice in the adolescent imagination».