MOTELX 2022: SPEAK NO EVIL And DEADSTREAM Win Feature Film Awards

“VORTEX”, by Guilherme Branquinho, is the winner of the SCML MOTELX Award for Best Portuguese Short Film, in the 16th edition of MOTELX.

 

“SPEAK NO EVIL”, by Danish director Christian Tafdrup, wins the Méliès d’argent Award for Best European Feature Film.

 

The winners of the 16th edition of MOTELX are already known. From 6 to 12 September, the Festival presented the best of national and international horror cinema, in a surprising year full of audiences and fans.

 

The winners of the 5 competitions of the 16th edition of MOTELX were announced last Sunday (11 September), during the Closing Screening of the Festival, at Cinema São Jorge.

 

The SCML MOTELX Award - Best Portuguese Short Film 2022 - the highest distinction granted in Portugal for short films (5.000€), with the support of Santa Casa da Misericórdia de Lisboa, which, this year, lends its name to the award - was given to “Vortex”, by Guilherme Branquinho.

 

The film is based on a problem that, according to the director, “many Lisboners identify themselves: not being able to stop the car when you come back home late from work”. Starting from a simple idea, “the film gradually enters a spiral of paranoia and almost psychotic frustration”, he explains.

 

Among 12 shorts films in the competition, the jury - composed by journalist and news presenter Maria João Rosa, artist Surma, and programmer, commissioner and editor Tiago Bartolomeu Costa - chose “Vortex” for transporting the viewer “on a journey, from which he cannot escape from beginning to end - one of the most difficult things to achieve in a film and one of the horror genre’s main goals”. “Reverso”, by André Szankowski, with script and interpretation by Afonso Pimentel, received a Special Mention.

 

The same panel of judges also decided to give the Méliès d’argent Award - Best European Short Film 2022 to French “Censor of Dreams”, by Léo Berne and Raphaël Rodriguez, for summing up “the essential ideas of this genre: intuitive, questioning, overwhelmingly challenging, about us and everyday life”.

 

“Speak No Evil”, by Danish director Christian Tafdrup, was distinguished with the Méliès d’argent Award - Best European Feature Film 2022. The jury, formed by the journalist, author and broadcaster Ana Markl, the film festival manager Sélina Boye, and the musician Tó Trips, chose the film “for the magnificent way it manages tension and touches the wounds of hypocrisy in social relationships”, and left a warning: “Think twice before making new friends”.

 

MOTELX’s spectators were sovereign and appointed “Deadstream”, directed by American couple Joseph and Vanessa Winter, for the Audience Award of the Festival’s 16th edition.

 

Finally, “O Fantasma da Minha Infância”, by Carolina Aguiar, Francisco Magalhães and Pedro de Aires, received the microSHORTS Award, a competition that has already become a cult in MOTELX and that challenges the creation of small doses of horror through new technologies. The winning microSHORT “was the one that best fit an abstract narrative with horror and, above all else, established an emotional connection”, says the jury panel, made up of the creator and director Ana Correia aka Peperan, the scriptwriter and actor André Mariño, and the DJ and actor Kiko is Hot.

 

About the 16th edition of MOTELX, the artistic directors Pedro Souto and João Monteiro highlight the “10 incredible days”, with “more than 100 films, 70 sessions and hundreds of hours of cinephile conviviality that we have missed so much in these last two years”.

 

MOTELX - Lisbon International Horror Film Festival returns in 2023, from 12 to 18 September, at Cinema São Jorge, for its 17th edition.