Awards

Portugal.

"The Silver Hugo Jury Award goes to Pedro Costa's Vitalina Varela, for a ravishing and masterful vision between horror and melodrama, spirituality and desperation that blew the jury all away."

Pedro Costa's Horse Money extends his collaboration with the Capo Verdean immigrants of Fontainhas in a new, surprising direction. The certainties of his earlier films have been stripped away, and what emerges is an incantation, a prayer, a mass, a film of memories we can only partly grasp, a documentary of dreams, a documentary as dream, a ghost story some would say, but certainly a film of astonishing power whose protagonists are the true heroes of our times.

For presenting life in its near-original form. The high artistic quality of this unusual documentary restores the human dignity in a life of poverty.

It tells of a demolition process: of a neighborhood and of a group of people. It visits the borders of civilization at a time when civilization is collapsing. The director establishes the right distance in watching his outcast characters with affection over a period of a year. With the simplest use of picture and sound, the film unfolds a slight narrative thread registering the passing of time, shot after shot. Any conclusion, whether moralistic or dramatic, would be indecent, and the film doesn't force one on the viewer.

Portugal

10th place.

Second Place

Tenth Place; tied with L'Arrière pays (1998), Jackie Brown (1997), and Titanic (1997)