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RIFFA Day 5: Awards Time!

Samiramis Kia, winner of the Best Canadian Short Film Award for her movie MILK

       I've never walked a Red Carpet before.
       It's not too special; you have to duck around people taking photos lest you wind up some intrusion in their otherwise happy memory, and the carpet is just a carpet. Not to mention in this specific case, the Casino Regina Show Lounge isn't the ideal place for one, lacking sufficient space for a Hollywood-style runway. It still felt special though, but what was at the end of it was the real treat.
       There were maybe a couple dozen people in the reception area when I arrived. An hour later, shortly before the Awards Ceremony was due to start the place was packed. Every sponsor and financier, program coordinators, volunteers, and festival directors were there, as were of course the directors, producers, even stars of the nominated movies and their families. As a humble small-time critic I very much felt like I'd won the Golden Ticket, invited to the same special occasion as so many more talented individuals. 
       The Awards Show itself was something I was anticipating with great curiosity. As an awards season junkie every time it rolls around (which I can't help in spite of how dumb it usually is), I was of course ready to compare the RIFFAs to the Oscars, Golden Globes, or BAFTAs. It didn't take long to realize there wasn't much comparable, as though the format is roughly the same, the execution was more even and sincere than those grand awards shows often are, even if it was also very cheesy.
Sponsor Dr. Renatta Varma and RIFFA
President John Thimothy
       Where the Opening Ceremony was emceed by Brit Dort, her CTV Morning co-host Darrell Romuld presided over this nights' festivities, a modest mix of awards, honours, and live entertainment, including fourteen year old violinist Marcus Geiger, the Philippines Artist Circle, and the Regina Salseros.  In a show with only nine awards something needs to fill up the time and these acts were certainly better than Romuld's jokes. There was much acknowledgement of the importance of the festival and admiration in its growth from various presenters and special guests -by far the best coming from Klaus Eder, who additionally shared his thoughts on Saskatchewan in the time he's been here ("I've never seen so much nothing in all my life" he says of the prairie). 
       Many of the movies I'd seen over the past four days were nominated, though only one of them won in its category -I had seen only twenty-nine out of one hundred and forty films, and as satisfied as I was with what I did see, I can't help feel I missed out on some of the best. Movies like MILK for instance, about a Russian immigrant family, which won its director Samiramis Kia the first award of the night for Best Canadian Short Film. A Place of Tide and Time, screened just that afternoon, won over Wolves Unleashed in the Canadian Documentary category, a movie quite fascinatingly about the fate of small fishing towns in an age of youth urban migration. The Student Short Film category surprised me by revealing two of the movies I saw, PIX and Jack and Anna were very well done student projects -the winner here was Ivan, a Greek experimental film on consumption. Best Animated Film went to Abel Goldfarb's Ian, a Moving Story, an exquisite-looking Argentinian movie about a child with cerebral palsy. 
Leon Chambers wins Best International
Feature for Above the Clouds
       Not a lot of winners were actually present to receive their awards, accepting often via prerecorded video from home or other festival locations, so it was a pleasant surprise that the director of Best International Feature Above the Clouds (British), Leon Chambers was on hand to collect his. An intriguing Polish story of an unorthodox SS guard, The Case of Johanna Langefeld won Best International Documentary, while Hard Learning about a teen girls' sacrifice to merely go to high school won Best Indigenous Short. The sole film that I'd seen to win an award was Tomorrow Island as Best International Short. 
Trista Suke, winner of the Best Canadian Feature Award for Foxy
       The last award was for Best Canadian Feature and it was clear what the winner was before it was announced. Possibly the most popular film at the festival (one that has picked up a few awards already and has been gaining traction on the festival circuit) was Foxy, a semi-documentary about a young woman living with alopecia universalis -a condition of complete hair loss. Writer-director and star Trista Suke glowingly received the award to the audience's utter delight, and her film clearly struck a powerful chord with so many people I regret not seeing it.
       But that too is the reality of film festivals. For every great movie you manage to see, there are at least a dozen you don't. I hope I will have the chance to see Foxy and Above the Clouds and MILK and A Place of Tide and Time eventually, but for now I'm happy with the experience I had. RIFFA was a great week, it was an honour to be invited and get to see movies I never would have seen or even known about otherwise. I would like to do it again. And hell, maybe try a few other film festivals in the meantime.
The festival programmers, sponsors, and winners of RIFFA 2019
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