Grand Prix
Best Film of the Year 2003
New Director of the Year 2003

As usual, the opening gala of the 51st Donostia-San Sebastian Internacional Film Festival on September 18 will serve as the stage for presentation of the FIPRESCI Grand Prix for Best Film of the Year and FIPRESCI Grand Prix for Best New Director of the Year.

Nuri Bilge Ceylan

This Prize, created in 1999 by the Donostia-San Sebastian International Festival and FIPRESCI (International Federation of Film Critics) with a view to jointly promoting and encouraging the most daring, original and personal cinema, has become one of the most prestigious on the calendar. The excellent reception by professionals and critics of the Grand Prix Fipresci for Best Film of the Year made it possible last year to create a new award destined to recognizing the work of a New Director of the Year, likewise to be presented at the same ceremony.

Christoffer Boe

Both Prizes are granted freely by international critics, who have chosen a film and a new director from among all of the works released between August 2002 and July 2003. This year 160 members of the Federation from all over the world cast their votes, with the outcome that the Grand Prix FIPRESCI for Best Film of the Year goes to the Turkish movie Uzak, by Nuri Bilge Ceylan and the Grand Prix FIPRESCI for Best New Director of the Year to the young Danish director Christoffer Boe for Reconstruction.

Both movies will be screened as part of the Zabaltegi – Festivals' Top section and will compete for the Audience Award.

Uzak, review by Attila Dorsay
Nuri Bilge Ceylan, portrait by Atilla Dorsay
Reconstruction, review by Grégory Valens