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The festival's awards of the AFRIKA FILMFESTIVAL LEUVEN 2008 were announced on the closure evening 26 april.
VETO AWARD 2008
THE COMPETITION FILMS where
- LE CHAOS
- THE FRONT
LINE
- IL VA PLEUVOIR
SUR CONAKRY
- SHAKE HANDS
WITH THE DEVIL
- PAPY MON
HISTOIRE
- THOMAS SANKARA -
L'HOMME INTEGRE
- ON THE RUMBA RIVER
The student's jury prize was for SHAKE HANDS WITH THE DEVIL (Roger Spottiswoode).
When General Roméo Dallaire received the call to serve as force
commander of the UN intervention in Rwanda in 1993, he thought he was
heading off on a modest peacekeeping mission. Thirteen months later he
flew home from Africa, broken, disillusioned and suicidal, having
witnessed the slaughter of 800,000 Rwandans in only a 100 days. Shake
Hands with the Devil, an adaptation of Dallaire’s autobiography, takes
its audience into the hell of Rwanda, vividly recreating the events the
international community turned its back on. It also explores the mental
torture Dallaire endured, his repeated requests for more aid and a
revision to the terms of engagement from the UN being ignored.
PUBLIC'S AWARD PROVINCE OF FLEMISH BRABANT 2008.
The public's prize was for LA GRAINE ET LE MULLET (Abdellatif Kechiche).
Sete, a harbour town in the South of France. The heavy manual labour in
and around the harbour gradually makes way for other activities.
Service industries, tourism, catering. Slimane Beiji, divorced, in his
sixties, and of Algerian origins, has worked for years on a shipping
wharf, but has to accept redundancy. He wants to use his severance pay
to convert an old fishing cutter into a North African speciality
restaurant. That is more complicated than he thinks. Kechiche unfolds
Slimane's complex family affairs mainly in apparently improvised
conversations at the kitchen table of his ex-wife, Saoud. There the
extended family turns up on Sundays for a delicious couscous with fish,
the dish from the title.
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Competition 