The 40th Critics Week, an independent sidebar of the Venice Film Festival, has come to a close with some exciting winners. The main prize for the best film went to the UK feature Circle<\/em>, a debut feature by British writer-director Oscar Hudson.<\/p>\n Circle<\/em> also received the most innovative feature award, which was selected by a jury of people under the age of 35. The film follows two soldiers from opposing nations who are stationed together at a remote border in South Africa. The movie features Neil Maskell, Luke Tittensor, and Elliot Tittensor in leading roles. It is produced by Kevin Rowe for 2 a.m. with Thomas Benski for Magna Studios and Rik Green and Riaz Rizvi.<\/p>\n The critics’ jury praised Circle<\/em> as "an absurd, highly colored dark comedy that increasingly turns into a waking nightmare." They noted that "the film is visually striking and we were overwhelmed by the amazing performance of the two leads. It is a sharp anti-war fable at a time when boundaries prevent exciting tensions up to date."<\/p>\n It was a strong performance for British films, with Imran Perretta’s ISH<\/em> maintaining a high audience score of 4.3 out of 5. ISH<\/em> follows two 12-year-old best friends who try to capture their friendship before a traumatic event and the search for a traumatic police encounter. The film is produced by Dhiraj Mahey and Bennett McGhee.<\/p>\n Global Constellation has taken over the distribution of both Circle<\/em> and ISH<\/em>. The best independent production price went to Giulio Bertelli’s Agon<\/em>, while Federico Cammarata and Filippo Foscarini were awarded the best technical contribution for Waking Times<\/em>. Another British film, Julia Jackman’s 100 Nights of the Hero<\/em>, was screened yesterday (Friday, September 5) in the Critics Week section outside of the competition. The Greece co-production Bearcave<\/em> won the Europa Cinemas label.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Introduction to the 40th Critics Week The 40th Critics Week, an independent sidebar of the Venice Film Festival, has come to a close with some exciting winners. The main prize for the best film went to the UK feature Circle, a debut feature by British writer-director Oscar Hudson. About the Winning Film: Circle Circle also<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":21605,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[6140,1520,647,6139,4625,6138,4632,4636,5225,497],"class_list":{"0":"post-21604","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-entertainment","8":"tag-agon","9":"tag-ancient-greece","10":"tag-black-comedy","11":"tag-constellation","12":"tag-critics-week","13":"tag-fable","14":"tag-luke-tittensor","15":"tag-neil-maskell","16":"tag-union-of-south-africa","17":"tag-venice-film-festival"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nanamedia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21604","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nanamedia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nanamedia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nanamedia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nanamedia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21604"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/nanamedia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21604\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21606,"href":"https:\/\/nanamedia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21604\/revisions\/21606"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nanamedia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/21605"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nanamedia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21604"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nanamedia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21604"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nanamedia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21604"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}About the Winning Film: Circle<\/h2>\n
What the Critics Say<\/h2>\n
Other Notable Films<\/h2>\n
Distribution and Other Awards<\/h2>\n