Thursday 31 March 2022

"Ostrov, the lost island", big winner of the Fishermen of the World festival

 


The Pêcheurs du Monde film festival brought together 2,500 people from March 20 to 27, in the Lorient region, around the screening of 37 films dedicated to the world of fishing. The film Ostrov the Lost Island was particularly noticed by winning three awards.

In the feature film category, the film by Svetlana Rodina and Laurent Stoop won it all: festival prize, youth jury prize and audience prize. It traces the life of the inhabitants of the Russian island of Ostrov, in the Caspian Sea. Since fishing is forbidden to them, they are forced to poach to survive, thwarting the surveillance of the coastguards. A film that particularly resonates with current events.

The young jury appreciated the proximity with the inhabitants, the sharing of their daily life and was seized by the place of Poutine in the homes” , details the organisers of the festival in a press release. "Profoundly human, fine and intelligent, "Ostrov" reflects the complexity of situations and the fragility of destinies" , specified the professional jury, chaired by the director Thomas Grand, and composed in particular of the journalist Catherine Le Gall and the former fishing boss of Roscoff, Manu Kelberine.

The other award-winning films are: Xaar Yàlla , by Mamadou Khouma Gueye (about the neighbourhoods of Saint-Louis, in Senegal, threatened by the sea); Men at Sea , by Alexandre Rufin (about the thoughts of a fisherman on his last day at sea); Iorram , by Alistair Cole (the portrait of a fishing community off the coast of Scotland); and People of the Water , by Azadeh Bizargiti (which chronicles the day of two women from Hengam Island, Iran, who fish daily to feed their families).