AWARDS/
NEW DIRECTORS PRIZE
The New Directors Prize is awarded to the director of a debut narrative feature that is an Official Selection of the San Francisco International Film Festival. It is accompanied by a $15,000 cash award. Films selected to compete for the New Directors Prize are first narrative features that exhibit a unique artistic sensibility or vision. An independent jury of film professionals from various fields screens the international selections during the Festival. The New Directors Prize was announced at the Golden Gate Awards on Wednesday, May 4, 2011.
NEW DIRECTORS COMPETITION OFFICIAL SELECTIONS
The Journals of Musan (Winner)
Park Jung-bum, South Korea
Autumn
Aamir Bashir, India
Circumstance
Maryam Keshavarz, USA/France/Iran/Lebanon
The High Life
Zhao Dayong, China
Kinyarwanda
Alrick Brown, USA/Rwanda
My Joy
Sergei Loznitsa, Germany/Ukraine/Netherlands
The Place in Between
Sarah Bouyain, France/Burkina Faso
The Salesman
Sébastian Pilote, Canada
She Monkeys
Lisa Aschan, Sweden
Tilva Rosh
Nikola Lezaic, Serbia
Ulysses
Oscar Godoy, Chile/Argentina
NEW DIRECTORS JURY
NICK JAMES
Nick James is the editor of Sight & Sound, the world’s leading English language film magazine first published in 1932. As a freelance critic on film, literature and art, James has contributed to the Guardian, the Observer, the Independent, Vogue, Time Out, the London Review of Books and the Literary Review. In 1995 he was appointed deputy editor of Sight & Sound and editor the following year. In 2002 his book on Michael Mann’s Heat was published, and he was the presenter of the BBC documentary British Cinema: The End of the Affair. He is currently working on a British film criticism reader as well as other book and film projects.
MARIE THERESE GUIRGIS
Marie Therese Guirgis is a talent manager in New York City who has represented film directors since 2008. She is a producer of the upcoming films The Loneliest Planet, The Goodbye People and Keep the Lights On, as well as a consultant for MPI/Dark Sky Films. Previously she was senior vice president of Wellspring, where she ran acquisitions and helped launch their theatrical releasing initiative.
DANIELA MICHEL
Daniela Michel is the founding director of the Morelia International Film Festival, an annual event launched in 2003 to support and promote a new generation of Mexican filmmakers. The festival shares an ongoing partnership with the Critics’ Week section of the Cannes Film Festival. Michel has served as juror for the Rockefeller Foundation’s Media Arts Fellowships, the Fulbright García-Robles Film Fellowships and the J. William Fulbright Prize for International Understanding, as well as for festivals including Sundance and IDFA. She has reported on film in major Mexican media as a print journalist and television presenter since 1994. Michel lives in Mexico City.
