36 wins & 34 nominations
- 2013 Winner Grand PrixSimplicity is the hardest thing to achieve in any art form, especially film. And though the winner of this year's Grand Prize may seem simple -- perhaps even almost naïve at first -- it is anything but. This deceptively sophisticated, bold, challenging and brilliant film forced us each to ask many questions -- human questions, philosophical questions, political questions, creative, artistic and cinematic questions -- and it has not ceased to resonate since we saw it. For all of us, it gave not only the sense of having watched a great film, but the actual feeling of having lived within the reality it reflects. This film does not only show a place and its people, but rather the film itself becomes a place. It transcends film and allows us to actually enter into the reality it describes in a manner that very few cinematic works -- if any -- ever accomplish. The ultimate goal of any art form is to awaken the viewer or its audience in some way. The most miraculous thing about this film is the way in which it avoids prescribing and articulating sentiments and messages for the viewer but awakens an individual awareness within each viewer. This is the highest goal of any artwork and the highest accomplishment.
- 2013 Winner Ecumenical Jury AwardThree Sisters guides us to Yunnan in a province in China. We follow three sisters living under conditions of immense poverty. The mother disappeared and the father is obliged to work in town far away. The film shows with majesty and respect the reverse of the globalization, the consumption and its consequences on the ones left behind, the most fragile members of the society, the children. The cinematic perspective discovers a world that confronts the precarious situation in the everyday life of the three sisters with their love, tenderness and a deep sense of responsibility between them.
- 2013 Winner E-Changer AwardDue to the sensitivity of his way of working the director has managed to let us dive into a reality that otherwise is invisible. The film leaves us with an almost physical experience to witness the conditions and challenges of three young sisters. We award the work of Wang, which whose images give those men and women a voice, who are often forgotten and ignored. We dare say that they are even despised because of the progress of our civilization.
- 2013 Winner Don Quixote AwardFor the accuracy and sensitivity with which the director offers us a penetrating and unsettling portrait of daily life in a community of highland farmers in mid China.
- 2008 Winner Netpac Award - Special MentionFor its dispassionate look at human labour which forms the basis for economic progress.
- 2007 Winner Robert and Frances Flaherty PrizeThe jury decided unanimously to give this prize to Wang Bing's deeply felt portrait of an outstanding woman, which creates an unforgettable moment in cinema.
- 2003 Winner Robert and Frances Flaherty PrizeThe jury was totally unanimous about this film. It is, perhaps, the first time that a filmmaker has made full use of new light and portable equipment to imagine a project that is truly innovative in its shooting conditions, and in its cinematographic language. With a minimal technical setup and a crew comprised only of himself, the director immerses himself with passion into the world he chose to film, like a fish in water. He succeeds in capturing the intertwining lives of more than a hundred characters, a feat reminiscent of the great Russian novels or the works of Emile Zola; he also manages to portray the realities and landscapes of China, the socio-economical changes following the decay of an industrial area, and their effects on individual lives. Without pathos, the film embodies the sadness of the industrial wastelands that have been created all over the world by globalization. Finally we witness the "growing-up" of the filmmaker, who evolves from one episode to another and who, in the eyes of the jury, is a young man full of promise for the future.
- 2004 Nominee Top 10 Film Award
- Best Film
Second Place; tied with S21: The Khmer Rouge Killing Machine (2003) and The Village (2004)
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