Israeli director Dalia Hager, whose film Close to Home was shown at the Forum in 2006 is among the new scholars of the DAAD'S renowned Artists-in-Berlin Programme.

Zoe Kazan has been awarded best actress for her role in Bradley Rust Gray's
The Exploding Girl at this year's Tribeca Film Festival. Yoav Shamir's Defamation received a special jury mention.

Simon El Habre's The One Man Village is the winner of the international competition at this year's HotDocs film festival. The Prize is endowed with 10.000 US-Dollars.

So Yong Kim won the outstanding director award for her film Treeless Mountain at the LA Asian Pacific Film Festival. The film also picked up acting awards for Kim Hee-Yeon and Kim Song-Hee.

Three films from the 2009 Forum program have been awarded at the IndieLisboa film festival: The Happiest Girl in the World won the FIPRESCI award; D'Arusha à Arusha and L'encirclement got special mentions; in addition the latter won the audience award.

Help Gone Mad by Boris Khlebnikov has been awarded the price for Best Director at the "goEast" film festival in Wiesbaden. Andrea Boşneeag of Radu Jude's The Happiest Girl in the World received a special mention as outstanding actress.

The main prize for best international feature at the Visions du Réel film festival in Nyon was awarded to L'encirclement by Richard Brouillette. Mental by Soda Kazuhiro received the prize of the interreligious jury.

Andrew Bujalski's Beeswax won the special jury prize at this yar's Boston Independent Film Festival.

Two films from the Forum 2009 can be found in this year's ACID Program at Cannes: Radu Jude's The Happiest Girl in the World and Land of Scarecrows by Roh Gyeong-Tae.

Monday, May 5th 2009 2.30pm at the 'Star'