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'War Witch,' 'Una Noche' Win Top Honors at Tribeca

(AP) ‘War Witch,’ ‘Una Noche’ win top honors at Tribeca
By JAKE COYLE
AP Entertainment Writer
NEW YORK
The African child soldier drama “War Witch” won best film and its 15-year-old star earned best actress Thursday night at the Tribeca Film Festival.

Tribeca announced its winners as the 11th annual edition of the New York festival wound down.

Montreal filmmaker Kim Nguyen shot “War Witch” in the Congo, where his young lead, Rachel Mwanza, was previously living on the streets. Mwanza, who earlier won best actress at the Berlin Film Festival, plays a pregnant teenager swept up in an unspecified revolution.

The festival jury said “War Witch” “balances scenes of crazy enemy hatred with moments of luminous private love.”

Best actor was given to both Dariel Arrechada and Javier Nunez Florian, who star in Lucy Mulloy’s “Una Noche.” The film is about Cuban teenagers, struggling in poverty, who decide to flee to Florida.

It’s a fiction that became reality when Nunez Florian and another actor from the film, Analin de la Rua de la Torre, disappeared in Miami en route to Tribeca from Havana. They are presumed to have defected from their native Cuba, where the film was shot.

Best documentary went to Nisha Pahuja’s “The World Before Her,” a film that juxtaposes the lives of Indian girls pursuing pageant glory as Miss India with those participating in a Hindu fundamentalist movement.

The Dutch filmmaker Jeroen van Velzen, whose “Wavumba” depicts fishermen on the coast of Kenya, was named best new documentary director.

The Tribeca Film Festival concludes Sunday.

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Online:

http://www.tribecafilm.com


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