Bergamo Film Meeting / The winners of the 43rd edition of the festival

BERGAMO FILM MEETING International Film Festival 43rd edition, March 8 - 16, 2025

43rd EDITION – THE WINNERS

Gina - Ulrike Kofler

Gina by Ulrike Kofler (Austria, 2024) is the winner of the main competition Mostra Concorso of the 43nd edition of Bergamo Film Meeting. Chosen by the audience, the film will receive the Bergamo Film Meeting Prize, worth 5,000 €. The international jury, composed of Dániel Hevér (director), Andrea Inzerillo (artistic director Sicilia Queer filmfest) e Tiina Lokk (artistic director Black Nights Film Festival di Tallinn) decided to award the Best Direction Prize, worth 2,000 € to Hiver à Sokcho/Winter in Sokcho by Koya Kamura (France, South Korea, 2024).
 

The audience has also awarded the Close Up section CGIL Prize (2,000 €) to the documentary Mutterland by Miriam Pucitta (Switzerland, Germany, 2023). The Prize - La Sortie de l’Usine of the CGIL jury, decided by the union delegates of CGIL Bergamo (1,000 €), goes to Dear Beautiful Beloved by Juri Rechinsky (Austria, 2024); and a special mention goes to Personale by Carmen Trocker (Italy, Austria, 2024).
 

The 44th edition of Bergamo Film Meeting will take place from March 7 to 15, 2026.

EXHIBITION COMPETITION

FIRST PRIZE BERGAMO FILM MEETING

Gina by Ulrike Kofler, Austria, 2024, 97’, col. 

At just nine years old, Gina has to care for her two younger siblings and a mother who is too young, single, alcoholic, and expecting her fourth child. She longs for a stable family, a father figure, and a loving grandmother. Instead, she is forced to confront poverty, the abandonment of her mother’s latest lover, and the pressure of social services. However, Gina refuses to accept a fate of failures, which threatens to pass inexorably from mother to daughter.

SECOND PRIZE BERGAMO FILM MEETING

Oro Amargo/Bitter Gold by Juan Olea, Germany, Uruguay, Chile, 2024, 86’, col.

Carola (16) lives in the Atacama Desert with her father, Pacífico. They eke out a living from an artisanal cobra mine, while secretly working a gold vein by night. When one of the miners discovers them, a scuffle ensues and Pacífico kills him, though he is left gravely injured. Determined, Carola steps into his role at the mine, confronting both hostile miners and her own inexperience.

THIRD PRIZE BERGAMO FILM MEETING

Fainéant.e.s/Lazy Girls by Karim Dridi, France, 2024, 106’, col.

After being evicted from a squat, Nina and Djoul, two long-time punks, set off in their old truck without a clear destination. An adventure begins, filled with seasonal jobs, everyday struggles and joyful transgressions, new encounters and old friendships rekindled, quarrels and reconciliations.

BEST DIRECTOR AWARD

Hiver à Sokcho/Winter in Sokcho by Koya Kamura, France, South Korea, 2024, 104’, col.

In Sokcho, a small seaside village in South Korea, 25-year-old Soo-Ha lives in a routine shaped by visits to her fishmonger mother and her boyfriend, Jun-Ho. The arrival of Frenchman Yan Kerrand at the boarding house where she works stirs questions about her identity and her absent French father. As winter sets in, Soo-Ha and Kerrand cautiously observe each other, attempting to communicate—she through cooking, he through drawing—delicately weaving a fragile bond.

The jury decided to award the prize for best direction of the 43rd edition of the Bergamo Film Meeting at Hiver à Sokcho/Winter in Sokcho by Koya Kamura, and said that: «The jury was particularly impressed by the way this debut work handles a complex material on a directorial level. Cinematography, editing and acting all masterfully work together to build up expectations for the mending of a family, for finding love and for Spring to finally arrive. The movie portrays the search for identity in a sensitive and subtle way, by telling a story of generational and cultural parallels. A meteorology of the soul that is always very articulate and intense. For these reasons, the Bergamo Film Meeting 43 Best Director Award goes to Hiver à Sokcho/Winter in Sokcho by Koya Kamura».

CLOSE UP SECTION

CGIL PRIZE

Mutterland by Miriam Pucitta, Switzerland, Germany, 2023, 93’, col. 

Miriam grew up as the child of Italian migrant workers in Switzerland in the 1960s and 70s. She herself has only fragmentary memories of this time; her mother and other relatives avoid Miriam’s questions. Together with her daughter Giulia, she researches the circumstances of her family’s life in Switzerland and finds a new understanding for the difficult decisions her parents made.

CGIL PRIZE JURY - “LA SORTIE DE L'USINE”

Dear Beautiful Beloved by Juri Rechinsky, Austria, 2024, 93’, col.

The war in Ukraine doesn’t stop at the front line. Many humanitarian operations rely entirely on the boundless dedication of volunteers. They receive refugees and guide them to train stations, help distressed seniors feel at home in bare reception shelters and drive through the country to pick up bodies, keep records and safeguard their belongings. Tirelessly they continue their work.

The jury said that: «A documentary film that recounts with extreme sensitivity and precision the reality of the war in Ukraine. We appreciated the care with which the film documents the consequences of the conflict, returning a powerful and touching portrait of those who live and suffer the war. Without spectacularizing, but using an intense and respectful visual language, Dear Beautiful Beloved powerfully conveys the horror of the war and the burden it leaves on people and communities. At a time in history when the narrative of war risks becoming habitual, this documentary forces us to look at it closely, reminding us that behind every conflict are stories, faces and broken lives. For its ability to make us reflect with depth and rigor, we award this prize to the film». 

SPECIAL MENTION

Personale by Carmen Trocker, Italy, Austria, 2024, 93’, col.

The film tells about the housekeeping team of a hotel in the Italian Dolomites – migrant workers who, from the belly of the hotel, keep the tourist machinery running. In the laundry, in the rooms and corridors of the hotel, we explore their work: their movements, their gestures, their paths and their processes, and we’ll see their personalities resonating inside the hotel’s structures.

In addition, the CGIL Jury has the pleasure of awarding the special mention to Personale by Carmen Trocker: «For the documentary’s ability to give a voice to those who arrive in our country in search of a better future and find themselves doing work which is often invisible, but fundamental to sustain an economy that produces luxury for few and sacrifice for many. With powerful imagery and without any rhetoric, Personale sheds a light on the dynamics of a system that too often exploits without acknowledging, that demands without offering rights and stability. In a world where the value of labor is increasingly crushed by the logic of profit, this documentary reminds us that behind every service, every daily gesture, there are people with stories, dreams and dignity».

During the 9 days of programming, the festival proposed 160 works including feature films, documentaries and short films, divided as follows: 2 competitive sections, COMPETITION EXHIBITION reserved to fiction feature films, and CLOSE UP dedicated to documentary; the focus on contemporary European cinema through the EUROPE, NOW! section, presented for the first time in Italy the complete works of Alice Nellis (Czech Republic), Christian Petzold (Germany), enriched by a selection of diploma films from European film schools that adhere to CILECT – in collaboration with Civica Scuola di Cinema Luchino Visconti di Milano - and by Europe, Now! Film Industry Meeting; the ANIMATION CINEMA with AnReal, a journey of discovery through animated documentaries; the retrospective dedicated to Otar Iosseliani; the homage to the Polish director Wojciech Jerzy Has on the occasion of the centenary of his birth; the KINO CLUB section, dedicated to young spectators of all ages; the collaborations with the festivals Animest (Romania), Cactus Film Fest (Aosta, Italy), ORLANDO Festival (Bergamo) and Bergamo Jazz; the INCONTRI: CINEMA E ARTE CONTEMPORANEA section, curated by The Blank, which this year features the visual artist Eva Giolo; the DAILY STRIP, the appointment with some of the best illustrators of the Italian comics scene.