Denise Fernandes’s feature debut Hanami wins the third edition of the SMART7 Competition
For the third year, The SMART7 Competition announced its winner during the closing gala of the 66th Thessaloniki International Film Festival, on November 9th. The prize was awarded to the Portuguese director of Capeverdean origins Denise Fernandes for her feature debut Hanami. The SMART7 competition celebrates new European cinema and was initiated in 2023 by a group of film festivals across the continent. Seven films selected by curators from each film event were screened along the festival season and the winner was chosen by an international youth jury. The prize of the program was €5,000.
Hanami follows a young girl living in a small community on a volcanic isle, where reality blends with fantasy. The jury reasoned:
We have awarded Hanami for its originality, in terms of its decolonial point of view. With a magical realist sensibility, the director portrays the life of a girl who contemplates Cabo Verde’s past, present and future in a very unique way, exploring the history of a community that has been instrumentalized by an imperialistic force for centuries.
The members of the international youth jury who awarded the film were Maria Mitulescu (Romania), Iasonas Friliggos (Greece), Vakarė Saulėnaitė (Lithuania), Bernardo Vaz Almeida (Portugal), Milagros Valerio (Spain), Katarzyna Nowicka (Poland), Fríða Möller (Iceland).
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SMART7 is a network initiated by seven film festivals that connects similar goals and visions from different European cultural and geopolitical areas. The main purpose of this alliance is not only to respond to current needs, but also to define common trends for future growth and development of industry and festival culture. SMART7 has members from seven different countries: Poland (New Horizons IFF), Iceland (Reykjavik IFF), Portugal (IndieLisboa IFF), Romania (Transilvania IFF), Spain (FILMADRID IFF), Greece (Thessaloniki IFF) and Lithuania (Vilnius IFF Kino Pavasaris).
Part of the initiative, SMART7 hosted workshops dedicated to festival professionals in Poland and Iceland.
SMART7 is a network co-funded by the Creative Europe Media.
