The Circuit

Films about life in war's shadow swept the AFI FEST jury awards on Sunday.  The fest announced that Lee Isaac Chung's tale of Rwandan genocide, "Munyurangabo," has won the Grand Jury Prize.  Andreas Mol Dalsgaard's post-war bodybuilding doc, "Afghan Muscles," and Nina Davenport's Iraq war-set "Operation Filmmaker" both won the doc award.  The three winners will each get $5000 of Kodak film stock and film budgeting software.  Audience awards went to Julian Schnabel's "The Diving Bell And The Butterfly" and "Spine Tingler! The William Castle Story," Jeffrey Schwarz' ode to the legendary horror film showman.

Before the closing night screening of Mike Newell's "Love in the Time of Cholera," AFI FEST Artistic Director Rose Kuo remarked "the members of our jury had a particularly difficult time singling out one film."  The feature jury included director Agnieszka Holland, writer John Ridley, "Lust, Caution" actress Joan Chen, "Life Without Me" director Isabel Coixet, and screenwriter Henry Bean.  "The Nines" d.p. Nancy Schreiber and doc filmmakers Kirby Dick and Doug Pray judged the nonfiction section.


Pictured: Shaz Bennett (Associate Director of Programming), Lund, Schwarz, Dalsgaard, Lane Kneedler (Senior Programmer), Nash Edgerton (winner of the narrative shorts jury prize for "Spider"), Natalie Mcmenemy (Documentary Programmer), Lauren Greenfield (winner of the doc shorts jury prize for "Kids + Money", and Rose Kuo (Artistic Director)