'Zero Motivation,' 'Point and Shoot' win Tribeca Festival prizes

[April 25, 2014]  By Chris Michaud

NEW YORK (Reuters) — The Israeli film "Zero Motivation" picked up a top prize on Thursday at the Tribeca Film Festival, winning best narrative feature, while the U.S. film "Point and Shoot" was named best documentary.

Paul Schneider won the award for best actor for the comedy "Goodbye to All That," in which he plays a man sent reeling after his wife demands a divorce, while Valeria Bruni Tedeschi took the best actress honor for her turn in the French-Italian production, "Human Capital," a three-chapter, interconnecting lives tale of a death told from three varying perspectives.

"Zero Motivation," a dark comedy about the everyday life of a unit of young female Israeli soldiers, which was directed by Talya Lavie, impressed the jurors as "the most hilarious film we saw at the festival."

"We believe a new powerful voice has emerged," they added in praising Lavie, who was directing her first feature film.

The movie also won the Nora Ephron prize, named for the late writer-director, which is awarded to a female director or writer.

Director Marshall Curry's documentary "Point and Shoot," which chronicles the 2011 trek of Matthew VanDyke from his home in Baltimore to Libya, where he joins the Libyan rebel army and takes up arms against Muammar Gaddafi, video camera in hand.

Jurors hailed the film as "an unsettlingly ambivalent and often darkly amusing portrait of a generation hellbent on documenting itself."

The screenplay award was won by Guillaume Nicloux for "The Kidnapping of Michel Houellebecq," which he also directed.

Honors for new directors were won by Josef Wladyka for "Manos Sucias," a U.S.-Colombia production, and Alan Hicks for the jazz-themed "Keep On Keepin' On," for narrative films and documentaries, respectively.

Among short films, "One Year Lease" won for documentaries while the United Kingdom's "The Phone Call" took the narrative prize.

Visitors to the festival's website again voted for winners, and chose "Vara: A Blessing," from Bhutan, and "Love in the Time of March Madness" as the best feature and best short films.

"Clouds," a non-linear documentary assembled from code, won the Transmedia award.

The Tribeca Film Festival, now in its 13th year and running through Sunday, was founded to help business and arts production in New York following the September 11, 2001, attacks.

(Reporting by Chris Michaud; editing by Jan Paschal)

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