Lidia Duda, photo: Kraków Film Festival
As yet another U.S. prize for Lidia Duda and her documentary Entangled, the director receives the Silver Hugo Award at the 49th Chicago International Film Festival, in the Social and Political Documentaries category
The 2012 production Entangled tells the true story of a molested teenager who ends up in jail for having tried to kill the paedophile who abused him earlier in life. Of the complex, ambiguous story of two men who both carry some blame, Lidia Duda clarifies, "It’s hard to define my protagonists unambiguously. You can’t say that one is good and the other bad. They both waver between good and evil. They swap roles, at one point one is the victim and suddenly turns into the executioner".
The film is a confession by two people full of sorrow, lonely and abandoned. The paedophile is searching for absolution, and talks about the harm that was done to him - the orphanage, being molested when he was a child. The teenager, who ended up in a correctional institution for attempted murder, doesn’t try to justify himself yet gives reasons for having done what he did.
Through the symmetrical depiction of the fates of the prospective executioner and his victim, Duda accuses the system of being indifferent to human fate: Strong enough to punish but not efficient enough to help victims. "In the world in which both my protagonists live, there is a tacit agreement to allow evil to grow", the director adds, "No one reacted to the evil inflicted on the boy by the paedophile. Everyone waited passively".
Before the director knocked on their doors, she thought about how she could convince them to tell her about their lives. She was sure they would slam the door in her face. But the first thing she asked was "Has anyone ever wanted to listen to you?".
The Silver Hug is another in a series of awards received by Duda for Entangled. She was awarded a Golden Lajkonik in the Polish films section at the Kraków Film Festival 2012 for "touching on a difficult topic and choosing the most appropriate form to portray it", and at the 9th International Festival of the Art of Reportage Camera Obscura in Bydgoszcz, the film received the Special Prize in the international competition and the Prize for Special Input in the Development of Reportage. With stunning cinematography by renowned cameraman Wojciech Staroń, Entangled brought Duda the award for Best Director at the International Human Rights Documentary Film Festival "One World" in Prague in March 2013, and the Silver Medal at the Film Festival in New York.
Now in its 47th year, the Chicago International Film Festival is the longest running and one of the biggest competitive film festivals in North America. Its beginnings date back to the 1960s when its founder, filmmaker and graphic artist Michael Kutz, decided to develop an event of the magnitude of the Cannes Film Festival in the U.S. Kutz remains the festival’s artistic director, and the organisers' motto is "New filmmakers, New stories and New points of view". Prizes for TV productions are given out in spring, and the festival takes place between the 10th and 24th of October 2013.
See the Festival website: Chicago International Film festival
Sources: based on the original article by BS, translated by MJ 26.04.2013