The Winners
2012 ALTER-CINÉ GRANT WINNERS
In 2012, the Alter-Ciné Foundation received 68 documentary submissions from 29 countries.
Nicolas Entel, recipient of the $10,000 Alter-Ciné Foundation grant
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| Nicolas Entel, a 38 year-old Argentinian filmmaker, received the $10,000 award for his project « Yasuni ». |
PROJECT DESCRIPTION
“Yasuní” opens in New York with filmmaker Nicolas Entel filming the installation of an oil well in the heart of one of the city’s most popular parks. The goal: to promote the Yasuni-ITT initiative, a proposition by the government of Ecuador to refuse exploitation of the oil reserves under the Yasuni Nation Park in exchange for a financial contribution of 3,600 million dollars from the international community, an amount equivalent to 50% of the value of those oil reserves.
Shortly afterward, the director travels with a Kichwa Indian to the equatorial region of the Amazon where Yasuni Park is located. The documentary takes us to the heart of the Kichwa community of Añangu, which has turned its back on oil production in order to focus on sustainable development, eco-tourism and education, having learned a lesson from the experience of the Waorani in Guiyero, located in the vicinity of oil wells.
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Ahmed Nour, recipient of a $5,000 Alter-Ciné Foundation grant
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| Ahmed Nour, a 29 year-old filmmaker from Egypt, received a $5,000 award for his project "Waves". |
PROJECT DESCRIPTION
In the early 1980s, Mubarak became president of Egypt and our generation has lived under his rule for the last 30 years. We finally managed to force him from power on February 11th 2011, shortly after the January 25th Revolution. "Waves" is a documentary in seven chapters relating the story of Suez, home to the internationally renowned canal, and the city that triggered the revolution, leading the media to call it “the flame of the Egyptian revolution”.
Artfully combining documentary footage, scenes depicting the director’s family members in animation, deep psychological analysis and first-person narration, the director introduces us to his home city Suez and the generation he represents which created the revolution. The film reveals hidden facts and incidents behind the revolution and leads up to the key moment when Mubarak faced criminal charges, a sequence of events that changed the course of history and gave hope to an entire generation.
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Hawa Ekua Essuman, recipient of a $5,000 Alter-Ciné Foundation grant
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Hawa Ekua Essuman, a 32 year-old filmmaker from Ghana, received a $5,000 award for her project
« Logs of War »
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PROJECT DESCRIPTION
We've heard about conflict diamonds, gold and oil but Charles Taylor - recently convicted of war crimes - paid for the last years of his civil war in Liberia with wood.
Silas Siakor, a Liberian activist, helped change all that. He risked his life to compile a report that convinced the United Nations to put sanctions on Liberian timber, cutting Taylor off from a last critical source of revenue. A few months later, Taylor stepped down from power.
Now, half a decade later, Siakor, winner of the Goldman Prize -- the World's most prestigious grassroots environmental award -- is trying to kick-start his country's struggling economy through a sustainable logging industry.
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Andrès Habegger, recipient of a $5,000 Alter-Ciné Foundation grant
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Andrès Habegger, a 43 year-old filmmaker from Argentina, received a $5,000 award for his project
« El (im)possible olvido ». |
PROJECT DESCRIPTION
A ghost-like figure for a father, almost a hero; a political activist who was kidnapped and disappeared in Brazil in 1978, a victim of Argentina’s military dictatorship. A 9 year-old son exiled in Mexico who has lived the major part of his life in the shadow of this absence. A story of the forgotten past and some salvaged memories, related through personal diaries some retrieved, others unfinished, that were marked by this disappearance.
The desire to recover what was lost, to continue and complete today the writings from his childhood. A search for truth and certitude about the kidnapping, the will to reconstruct the circumstances of this disappearance and to hunt out those responsible in a fleeting quest for justice.
El (im)posible olvido is an emotional and political interior voyage to a place where lost memories are buried.
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