Aäläm-Wärqe Davidian is taking home a major honor from the Toronto International Film Festival. She has been named as the winner of the third edition of the Audentia Award for Best Female Director. The announcement was made at a TIFF ceremony on September 16. TIFF and The Council of Europe’s Eurimages Fund confirmed the news in a press release.
Davidian’s debut feature, “Fig Tree,” made its world premiere at the fest. Set at the end of the Ethiopian Civil War, the drama follows a Jewish Ethiopian teenage girl determined to save her Christian boyfriend from being drafted as she and her family make plans to flee the country.
The award includes a 30,000 euros (about $35,000 USD) cash prize. “Alias Grace” star Sarah Gadon introduced Davidian and presented her with the honor. “Davidian said on receiving the prize that it represented a repeat frequency that encouraged her feelings and her filmmaking and as a woman, her responsibility to take part in the thought of how humanity shapes itself,” according to the press release.
The jury, which included TIFF Director of Programming Kerri Craddock, noted that “Fig Tree” “is a stunning and illuminating film.” They continued, “Based on Davidian’s own experiences, the director takes us on an unsentimental journey and shows us the tragic effects of civil war on ordinary people. This is a confident director, who tells a solid story with grit and compassion; a story about a multi-layered African character trying to be her own woman. The film is about empowerment and it is beautifully rendered by a perfect young cast.”
“I wanted to share the spirit of women and men who touched my heart and who are still padding my memories, and perhaps give visibility and voice to the lives of many immigrants who seemed happy when they achieved their goal and arrived in the new land they so wished for,” Davidian told us in an interview. “But the truth is that for many of us, like Mina from ‘Fig Tree,’ it was not only a new beginning but also the end of a period, and the migration remained a personal wound and tragedy.”
The Audentia Award is hosted by a different fest each year. Valérie Massadian (“Milla”) and Anca Damian (“The Magic Mountain”) previously won the honor.
Camilla Strøm Henriksen received an Honorable Mention this year for “Phoenix,” a pic about a teen dealing with her mother’s mental illness and her father’s absence.
TIFF ran from September 6-16.
