LONDON (AP) – Movies about corruption, gang violence, honor killing and war took prizes Saturday as the London Film Festival recognized cinema that confronts the harsh realities of our world.
Andrey Zvyagintsev’s “Leviathan,” a tragic satire of small-town Russian corruption, was named best picture. The film, which took the screenplay prize at this year’s Cannes Film Festival, was praised for its “grandeur and themes” by a jury that included actor James McAvoy and producer Jeremy Thomas.
Ukrainian director Myroslav Slaboshpytskiy won the first-feature award for “The Tribe,” a teen-gang drama set at a school for the deaf and performed entirely in sign language, without subtitles.
Actress Sameena Jabeen Ahmed was named best British newcomer for her performance as a British-Pakistani teenager on the run from her family in “Catch Me Daddy.”
The documentary prize went to “Silvered Water, Syria Self-Portrait,” a searing look at war’s brutality by Paris-based director Ossama Mohammed and Wiam Simav Bedirxan, an schoolteacher who filmed life in the besieged city of Homs.