The Dutch documentary BORIS RYZHY by Aliona van der Horst has been awarded the prize for Best Documentary 2009 at the Edinburgh International Film Festival. Additionally, Katie Jarvis picked up the PPG Award for Best Performance in a British Feature Film for her extraordinary debut in the Dutch co-production FISH TANK by Andrea Arnold (NL producer Kasander Film).
Following BORIS RYZHY’s premiere at the International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam (IDFA) in November 2008, where the film was awarded a Silver Wolf for Best Documentary under 60 minutes, the film has won several important awards, including the Jury Award at the Montreal International Festival of Films on Art (FIFA) 2009 and the Dutch Director’s Guild Award. The film has been produced by Frank van den Engel for Zeppers Film and TV.
The Edinburgh festival jury praised BORIS RYZHY as a ‘visually stunning, imaginative, sensitive and ultimately revealing portrait of both an individual psyche and a national predicament’.
In her film director Aliona van der Horst meets the former neighbours of the Russian poet Boris Ryzhy seven years after his death (Boris committed suicide in 2001 at the age of 27). They find it hard to remember the promising young man that once lived in the Russian city of Yekaterinburg.
Edingburgh International Film Festival, 17 – 28 juni 2009
www.edfilmfest.org.uk