Ruth Wilson, ‘Rhino’ Take Top Honors at Stockholm Film Festival

Oleg Sentsov’s Ukrainian crime drama Rhino has won the prize for best film at the 2021 Stockholm International Film Festival.

Serhii Filimonov was honored as best actor for his starring performance in Rhino as a gangster rising through the ranks in the lawless world of post-Cold War Ukraine.

Senstov was only able to make the film after spending five years as a political prisoner in Russia (he was arrested and changed for “plotting terrorist acts” after protesting Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014).

Ruth Wilson won the best actress award in Stockholm for her role in Harry Wootliff’s True Things, in which she plays a woman who begins a reckless affair with a potentially dangerous man (played by The Souvenir actor Tom Burke).

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Tatiana Huezo won best director for Prayers for the Stolen. The drama, Mexico’s official entry for the 2022 best international feature Oscar, follows three young girls on the path to adolescence, growing up in a village plagued by drug cartel violence. Tim Curtin won best cinematography for Jonas Carpignano’s Italian drama A Chiara.

French filmmaker Céline Sciamma won the Fipresci prize for best film, awarded by international film critics, for her latest, the low-key time travel drama Petite Maman.

Best documentary went to Swedish director Hogir Hirori for Sabaya, which follows a group who infiltrate Syria’s infamous Al-Hol refugee camp to try and save a women being held by ISIS.

Twenty-year-old director Luàna Bajrami from Kosovo, the youngest filmmaker in competition in Stockholm this year, won honors for best debut film and best screenplay for her first feature, The Hill Where Lionesses Roar. The coming-of-age drama, which premiered at Directors’ Fortnight in Cannes, focuses on a trio of young women who decide to escape their daily lives by forming a gang. Swedish actor Edvin Ryding, best-known for his role in Netflix series Young Royals, was honored as this year’s rising star.