40th Karlovy Vary International Film Festival

The Ecumenical Jury of the 40th Karlovy Vary IFF awards its prize to the film Kinamand (Chinaman) whose prosaic, everyday reality is the driving force behind a well-constructed story redolent in ecumenical, redemptive and liberating significance concerning the bridging of the divide between Danish and Chinese cultures. The jury was impressed with the film’s emphasis of the vulnerability of the legal status of immigrants and the transformation of the main character, Keld, who transcends his own limitations and fulfils his obligation to a woman with whom he had initially entered into an inauthentic marriage but who takes on a duty of care and responsibility towards her that surpasses even her death in the performance of a Chinese burial ritual.