Ankara 2007

"Faces of a Fig Tree" by Kaori Momoi

The international women's film festival of Turkey, the Flying Broom Film Festival, celebrated it's 10th edition — despite many difficulties. Showing 149 films from four corners of the world the festival gave a wide range of women's power in film making. Our jury awarded the Japanese film Face of a Fig Tree by Kaori Momoi.

The three women explained their decision as followed: "This film affirms women but also life itself, and the ways in which that life remains imprinted on our memory. It captures life as both struggle and as joy, and it does that in a rich and innovative visual language which of ten disrupts conventional story-telling Finally, this film is the directing debut of an a woman who has switched to filmmaking after having built a career for herself as an actress in films directed by incidentally male filmmakers such as Akira Kurosawa, Shohei Imamura, Kazuo Hara or Alexander Sokurov.We have decided in favour of this film as it discretely asserts the potential and the right of women to try new life-path s at different moments throughout their careers, rather than staying stuck with the choices made in their youth."

The festival (May 10-20, 2007): www.ucansupurge.org
Details of the prize

Reports
Female Desire and Subjectivity. In the FIPRESCI prize winner Face of a Fig Tree by Kaori Momoi Adina Bradeanu finds a lot of sentimentality through the humor of a central character bricolaged at the intersection of a clichéd, ever-bowing Japanese femininity with a pinch of chatty sitcom-femaleness.
The Ability to Survive. Penka Monova explains how the Belgian film "Iceberg" by Fiona Gordon and Dominique Abel succeeds in observing the comic side of our modern age while recognizing the tragic need for escape that makes us human.
Women under Pressure. Necla Algan focuses on the four key films of this year's competition dealing with different forms of pressure against women in different countries.

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