The Danish thriller Sons (Vogter) won Best Feature Film, while the Hungarian short film On the Lookout (Lesen) took the Best Short Film award at the second MetroPOLICE Crime Film Festival in Kecskemét.
According to a press release issued on Monday by the organizers, the festival, held from 26 to 30 September, awarded the Special Jury Prize for Best Director to Mátyás Prikler, director of Power (Hatalom). The four-member jury consisted of crime linguist Sára Ránki, filmmakers Lilla Kizlinger and Attila Szász, and writer János Bán, managing director of Kecskemétfilm Ltd.
The reasoning for the award states that the Danish thriller Sons, directed by Gustav Möller, offers an authentic portrayal of an environment rarely seen in film from a novel and highly unusual perspective. It provides a gripping and complex backdrop for the psychological game between a prison guard mother and her imprisoned son, drawing viewers ‘twist by twist into the deeper, darker, and more disturbing recesses of the human soul’.
Péter Karácsony, who entered the competition with several films, ultimately won with On the Lookout, which the jury described as raising an important theme and providing a ‘painfully relevant snapshot of the flawed human nature’. Despite its mere 16-minute runtime, the film effectively blends Hitchcockian suspense with dark, bloody humour and the bitterness of grotesque social drama, the jury commented.
The Special Jury Prize for Best Director was awarded to Mátyás Prikler for the Slovak–Hungarian political thriller Power (Hatalom) in recognition of the precise and highly disciplined execution of a minimalist and restrained directorial concept.
According to the jury, this approach enhances the portrayal of the complex narrative of crime and punishment, while also bringing out the subtleties of the multidimensional characters. It simultaneously conveys both the environment in which the characters operate and the emotional layers they experience, the press release added.
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