AFI Fest 2008: The Awards

A group of Indian teenagers doing their part to make the
world a better place in the AFI Audience Prize co-winner
for Best Documentary: The World We Want

As Edward Zwick’s World War II drama Defiance makes its world premiere tonight, AFI draws to a close for another year, but not before the grand jury and audience awards were announced earlier this afternoon. Though the festival is almost over, LiC’s coverage will continue in the coming days with reviews of several more films. For now, on with the awards.

Grand Jury Prizes:

Best Feature: Acne. Federico Veiroj’s Uruguayan coming of age tale about a 13-year-old boy with bad skin, divorcing parents and the overwhelming urge to kiss a girl.

Best Documentary: Kassim the Dream. Kief Davidson’s recent Independent Documentary Association nominee emphasized its status as a documentary to watch out for by taking the AFI jury prize for Best Documentary. It tells the story of Kassim “The Dream” Ouma, a former Ugandan child soldier who became the International Boxing Federation Junior Middleweight champion of the world in 2004. I was unable to catch it at the festival, but I hope to have a chance to see it soon.

Audience Awards:

Best Feature: A Necessary Death. AFI graduate Daniel Stamm’s debut feature tells the story of a group of struggling indie filmmakers who decide to make names for themselves by documenting a suicide.

Best Documentary (Tie): Kassim the Dream and The World We Want. With a historic election happening in the middle of the festival, it was difficult focusing on AFI Fest this year. Sometimes world events remind us there are more important things to life than movies. On the other hand, sometimes movies come along with the power to change the world for the better and that’s the case with The World We Want. This co-winner of the Audience Award for Best Documentary is a call to action for teenagers the world over and a potent reminder that significant change can happen from the bottom up. It’s a timely message, particularly in light of the youthful optimism that helped sweep the first African-American into the White House on Tuesday.

Since 1995, over 10 million teenagers from all 50 United States and 65 countries around the world have participated in We The People: Project Citizen, a program funded by the U.S. Department of Education to inspire students to identify problems in their communities and then to design and implement solutions.

In 2007 the first Project Citizen International Showcase was held in Washington D.C. where students from over 30 countries convened to present their projects. Using the showcase as a focal point, Peter Davidson’s documentary travels to Bosnia-Herzegovina, Colombia, India, Indonesia, Jordan, Russian, Senegal and the United States to follow the progress of the projects ranging from school lunch nutrition, to clean drinking water to teen gambling. Cameras track the students and interview them as they gather information, pressure local officials and run into lobbyist roadblocks. The students have initiated these changes themselves and ultimately they push them forward with their own hard work. It’s a heady lesson in problem solving from the ground up and proof that anyone can make a difference with a little force of effort.

The filmmaking is slick if unspectacular, but it allows the message to come through loud and clear. It gets a little repetitive as it jumps from one group of kids to another, but the teens themselves are so optimistic, hard working and likeable that things never get dull.

The best part about the documentary is that it doesn’t lecture to its audience, instead telling its story completely in the voices of the participating teenagers. Instead of another example of adults telling kids what to do, it’s a group of young people showing the way through their own actions. Also, though it is clearly aimed at teens, there is enough inspiration in this documentary to warm up even hardened adult cynics.

I’m not sure if The World We Want is intended for a theatrical release, but it should have a long and healthy life playing in front of educational groups and more importantly in classrooms across the country and around the world.

Filed under: Film Festivals
Tags: A Necessary Death, Acne, AFI Fest, Daniel Stamm, Federico Veiroj, Kassim the Dream, Kief Davidson, Peter Davidson, The World We Want
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