The devastating and visually inventive Vortex by Gaspar Noé has been awarded the Grand Prix for Best Film by the International Jury at the 48th Film Fest Ghent. A Special Mention went to Memoria, Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s first film outside Thailand. Clara Sola, directed by Nathalie Álvarez Mesén and with a score by Ghent-based composer Ruben De Gheselle, won the Georges Delerue Award for Best Music.
Grand Prix for Best Film
On Friday 22 October the Official Competition of the 48th Film Fest Ghent came to a spectacular close. The Competition was packed with an eclectic line-up of fifteen features, including debuts, a documentary, the Lady Di film Spencer and two Belgian films, Un monde and Inexorable. The International Jury consisted of Hlynur Pálmason, Lucas Belvaux, Florencia Di Concilio and Jury President Doreen Boonekamp. Unfortunately, Iranian filmmaker Panah Panahi couldn’t participate at the festival as a jury member due to administrative issues with his travel documents. Panahi could, however, make it in time to present his debut Hit the Road to Belgian audiences.
During the closing ceremony, right before the closing film The French Dispatch, the four-member International Jury crowned Vortex by Argentinian provocateur Gaspar Noé the winner of the 2021 Grand Prix for Best Film. Noé previously attended Film Fest Ghent in 2018 with his ingenious party film Climax, which was screened out of competition, and walked the red carpet in Ghent again tonight to accept the prize in person. The Grand Prix comes with a €20,000 distribution grant for Belgian distributor Paradiso Films, which releases the film in Belgian theatres on 16 February 2022, and a media campaign worth €27,500. The International Jury was “impressed by the film’s mise-en-scène, originality, directing, script and editing, but also by its mix and sound design and the exceptional performances of the actors. The duality of the interaction between the split screens creates nothing less than one wholesome outstanding piece of art.”
With his latest chef d’oeuvre, Gaspar Noé surprisingly leaves his trademark depictions of graphic sex, violence and psychedelic drug use behind. Vortextells the coming-of-old-age story of an elderly, unnamed couple – played by Italian giallo maestro Dario Argento and French icon Françoise Lebrun. Noé’s newest feature may deviate from the excesses and taboos of his previous work, but by making the drastic choice to show almost the entire film in split screen, he reminds us that he is driven by the need to push boundaries and make rebellious choices. “In this film it makes total sense to use the split screen. It makes sense because they live under the same roof and one loses his mind. The two have different realities,” Noé told the audience in Ghent. He manages to show both the agonising and isolating effects of dementia in a particularly inventive and cinematic way.
