Koza awarded at 15th goEast Wiesbaden

Shortly after the awards for the Best Film and the C.I.C.A.E. Art Cinema Award in Vilnius, feature debut Koza (2015) by Ivan Ostrochovský collected two further awards from the Competition for Fiction Features and Documentaries at 15th goEast – Festival of Central and Eastern European Film (April 22 - 28, 2015) in Wiesbaden, Germany.

The festival jury awards four main festival awards, and this year consisted of Pavel Strnad (Czech Republic, Head of the Jury), Anja Antonowicz (Poland), Bernd Buder (Germany), Marian Crişan (Romania) and Ines Tanović (Bosnia and Herzegovina). Main festival awards were presented to films from Serbia, Hungary, Slovakia and the Czech Republic.

Koza and its director Ostrochovský won the Award of the City of Wiesbaden for Best Director (7,500 euros). As stated by the Jury, the film was selected for the award “for portraying a special character on a journey to his limits” and “for a distant directing which brings us very close to the protagonists”.

In addition, Koza was also favoured by the FIPRESCI Jury, Ingrid Beerbaum (Germany), Jean-Max Méjean (France) and Andrey Plakhov (Russia), who decided to grant to International Film Critics´ Award to the film with the following statement: "This very well observed poetic road movie reflects impresivelly the difficult and depressing situation in Eastern Europe, potraying a simple young man and former box champion who´s struggling to make ends meet. In well-set, beautiful images the film creates a catching atmosphere and tells also the story of a strange but great friendship with an open ending.”

Photo credit: goEast Wiesbaden / Kai Pelka

More information at:
goEast Press Release / April 28, 2015 
goEast list of awards / link to pdf

Related AIC articles:
Two awards for Koza at Vilnius FF

published: 29.04.2015
updated: 30.04.2015