On the evening of the 9th of September, the official award ceremony of the second Golden Tree International Documentary Film Festival took place in Frankfurt/Germany before the festival officially concluded on the same evening. After 31 movies that made it to the finals of the competition went through a strict review and discussion process by the final jury, a total of 6 documentary films climbed to top of the Golden Tree film competition.
"Callshop Istanbul” by the Canadian filmmakers Sami Mermer and Hind Benchekroun won the award for the Best Feature Length Documentary ;"Coming of Age”, a documentary by the South African director Teboho Edkins won the award for Best Medium- Length Documentary; another award went to South Africa when Simon Wood's film “Orbis” won the award for Best Short Documentary; the award for Best Mini Documentary was given to Miguel Argiles from Spain and his film“Eli.Swedish Passion” which tells the story of a sick yet optimistic girl called Eli, whose thinking about life is very thought-provoking. Simon Gillard received the award for Best Director.His film “Boli Bana”tells the story of the Fulai children in Burkina Faso.The three Chinese directors He Shiping, Fu Peng and Zhou Chengyu won the Special Jury Prize for their work “Hermit”.
Organizer of the event as well as chairwoman of Beijing Huayunshangde International Cultural Exchange Co.,Ltd. Mrs. Wang Libin said that documentaries play a great role in finding out more about unknown civilizations and looking objectively at other cultures. She also hopes that more people will be able to record the roots of every culture and civilization of the world through documentaries, which is the original intention of the Golden Tree International Documentary Film Festival.
Mrs.Wang Libin also announced that the upcoming Golden Tree International Documentary Film Festival 2018 will feature a Joint Production Meeting Hall that will help documentary filmmakers as well as industry elites and experts conduct face-to-face exchanges and communication to receive investments, international joint production opportunities, copyright transactions as well as other substantive forms of cooperation.
The second Golden Tree International Documentary Film Festival received a lot of acclaim from all over the world, and dozens of international mainstream media were rushing to report on the event. Among them, 3SAT, a TV channel jointly established by three countries, adjusted its original scheduled program for their primetime show“Culture Time" to report about the Golden Tree on Friday, September 8th. The show is widely regarded as one of the most influential cultural television shows in the German- speaking area of Europe.
The registration period for the third Golden Tree International Documentary Film Festival will officially begin on September15th, 2017. The event itself will take place from September 19th to September 22nd in Frankfurt. In terms of awards, next year' s finals will add completely new award categories to the already established 6 award categories, such as Award for Best Camera Work, Award for Best Editing, Best VR DocumentaryAward,Award for Best College Director, 2018“Golden Tree”Award.
