By Jaie Laplante, Executive Director & Director of Programming
Amidst grumblings that the world’s most important film gathering in Cannes disparages the documentary genre (only five documentaries have appeared in the Official Competition in the past 40 years) , France’s national Civil Society of Multimedia Authors this year initiated L’Oeil d’or, a new award to highlight documentary cinema playing across all three of the simultaneous festivals (Cannes Film Festival – all sections, Director’s Fortnight, and Critic’s Week).
In an important and symbolic step, the L’Oeil d’or award was legitimized by recognition from the main Festival’s director, Thierry Fremaux. Fourteen films were eligible for adjudication by a five-member jury, this year headed by Franco-Cambodian documentarian and recent Oscar nominee, Rithy Panh (The Missing Picture).
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A still from Beyond My Grandfather Allende.
On the next-to-final day of the Festival, the jury unveiled Chilean-Mexican filmmaker Marcia Tambutti Allende’s Beyond My Grandfather Allende (Allende, Mi Abuelo Allende) as the inaugural winner of the new prize. Marcia Tambutti is the granddaughter of the Chile president Salvador Allende, who committed suicide in 1973 inside the presidential palace when military forces led by Augusto Pinochet overthrew the government in a coup d’etat that lasted 15 years.
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An iconic portrait of Salvador Allende.
Programmed in the Director’s Fortnight, Tambutti’s film is deeply personal, and gingerly addresses old wounds that have never really healed – first in her family, but (as the film gradually makes clear) in the country as a whole. Even as Tambutti attempts to engage her ailing grandmother (Allende’s wife), her own mother, her cousins and other family members and friends of family members, she meets much resistance, many attempts to deflect. The truth is that this is far from a comfortable subject, but ultimately a necessary one for all generations involved.
Tambutti’s skill and sensitivity in negotiating this difficult path – to constantly probe, but never to disrespect boundaries – is what makes the movie work. As much a subject of the film as its objective observer, it is harrowing emotional territory for Tambutti, but part of the road to freedom that she and all Chileans are still walking down.[/fusion_builder_column][/fusion_builder_row][/fusion_builder_container]
