This year’s top Chicago International Film Festival prize–the Gold Hugo for best picture–has been awarded to the Polish film “My Nikifor,” director Krzysztof Krauze’s portrayal of a brilliant, impoverished and eccentric street artist, the real-life Nikifor Krynicki, and his stormy relationship with the more successful, state-employed painter Marian Wlosinski.
“My Nikifor” co-star Roman Gancarczyk, who played Wlosinski, scooped up the fest’s Silver Hugo for best actor.
Other major honorees, announced Saturday, included Inka Friedrich and Nadja Uhl, co-winners of the best actress prize for their roles as middle-class friends and neighbors in Andreas Dresen’s “Summer in Berlin.” The runner-up Silver Hugo for features went to director Cristi Puiu’s “The Death of Mr. Lazarescu,” a devastatingly realistic Romanian drama about a sick, elderly man trapped in a maze of medical bureaucracy as his life ebbs.
The documentary Gold Hugo winner was Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady’s “The Boys of Baraka,” and the runner-up was Kief Davidson and Richard Ladkani’s “The Devil’s Miner.”
Legendary Portuguese filmmaker Manoel de Oliveira, the still-prolific 96-year-old whose “Magic Mirror” was one of the Chicago festival competition films this year, won a Gold Hugo for Lifetime Achievement, commemorating a storied movie career that stretches back to the silent era.
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The Personals page was compiled by Cheryl Bowles from Tribune news services and staff reports.