Commendation of the Ecumenical Jury, Oberhausen 2020 (International Competition)

For the innovative, original and intimate approach to the subject of war, life and death, the Ecumenical Jury gives a Commendation to The Many Deaths of Arístides. The animation of a silhouetted figure, journeying on a boat through the dark fuses with the frozen moments of time as we hear the letter of a young man that never returned home. His prayer for Olga centralises the film as hope, as a cry to God for the life of the other, as love outshining the depths of darkness. The film makes memory alive and breaks the time boundaries, transcending visually what cannot be described in words, and as such it is a work of pure cinema.