The film won the Gryphon Award for Best Film in the 16+ category. According to the festival website, jurors were "troubled by the behaviours of the protagonist and by the disorientation of his parents who satisfy only the material desires of their son. Furthermore they saw in the 'suicide room' a sort of resignation from life". In the same category, Marius Holst's King of Devil's Island (a Norwegian-Swedish-Polish production) won second place.
The protagonist of Suicide Room is a teenager who seems to live the ideal life: settled at home and successful at school. His final secondary-school exams are approaching and his life appears to follow the right track. And yet the boy seems to be missing something. He becomes part of a dangerous online network of troubled youths.
The film also won the special Arca Cinemagiovani Award. As the jury remarked, the distinction was given for "the accuracy of the screenplay, full of references to Shakespeare's Hamlet. For bringing to light an underestimated subject such as the addiction to virtual reality and social networks. For the protagonist's interpretation and intensity, a symbol of social uneasiness". It also won the Best Music Score Award by the Music Conservatory of Salerno for
the clever combination of several musical languages that have caught and highlighted the emotions conveyed by the images and by the narrative flow we are happy to give this award to the musical score of Suicide Room, a true and intense film dressed up in the sobriety of its music with the Mozart orchestra and piano theme or the more modern technical compositions such as the different layered sound.
This year's festival is inspired by a quote by Galileo: "Things are linked by invisible bonds: you cannot pick a flower without upsetting a star". The links that connect people today are increasingly virtual - the digital world and social networks have a great impact on our lives today. is a word that we use almost on a daily basis given that it has to do with computers and those social networks through which we almost completely live our lives socially nowadays.
The 41st edition of the Giffoni Film Festival took place between the 12th and 21st of July 2011. For the full list of this year's winners, see: www.giffonifilmfestival.it.
Source: Giffoni Film Festival