FANNY’S JOURNEY wins what exactly?

At the JEF festival in Antwerp and Bruges, FANNY’S JOURNEY (Lola Doillon, France) was awarded by the ECFA jury. With that very same prize now comes another national award: the ‘Felix Vanginderhuysen Distribution Award’.

In his last years as ECFA’s General Secretary, Felix Vanginderhuysen took off on a ‘festival tour of duty’, taking his bow across Europe. After Felix’s recent laudations at the Olympia and the Schlingel Festival, now also the JEF festival found a way to pay tribute to one of its co-founders. The most important festival award will from now on carry the name ‘Felix Vanginderhuysen Distribution Award’, offering the winning film not only a nomination for the ECFA Awards, but also a distribution in Flanders.

The first Felix Vanginderhuysen Award (and first ECFA Award nomination in 2018) went to FANNY’S JOURNEY. In 1943 13-year-old Fanny is fleeing the war, taking in tow a group of children trying to reach the Swiss border, despite physical and political obstacles. “It is a universal and compelling story that is sadly still as relevant today as it was to Fanny in 1943. The children go through a horrifying experience, however, the film focuses on their resilience and how they rely on each other’s different strengths to complete their journey”, the jury stated.

The ECFA Jury were Sandra Aminda Indahl (Verdens Beste Film Festival, Norway), Pip Eldridge (Into Film, UK), Pien Houthoff (cinema director, The Netherlands) and Anke Brouwers (University of Antwerp and KASK School of Arts, Belgium).