Bike Theft Comedy James Wins Oldenburg Film Festival

Surprising German audience with its non-conventional humor, James, a Canadian comedy about a stolen bike was awarded the Best Film prize of the German Independence Award at the Oldenburg Film Festival this year. 
 
The black and white feature from director Max Train akin to ‘the early works of Jim Jarmusch’ follows the titular character Dylan Beatch who co-scripted and portrayed a pathetic cyclist who stumbles upon a bike frame in a bin; erects a racer and changes his life for the better. James, whose bike is stolen, does everything he can to get it back, even if it means getting involved into criminal sphere of Canada’s Vancouver. 
 
James, which was directed by Samantha Moore; the film premiered in Oldenburg, and the jury liked it and awarded the film Sunday night the festival’s main prize. 
 
Olwin best actor or the Seymour Cassel Award was awarded to Tim Blake Nelson for his role in Bang Bang in which he has to play a role of retired boxer who wants to come to term with past. In the category of the best actress, Aki Kigoshi was awarded for her performance of the role of a prostitute in Zhang Suming’s drama A Wasted Night. 
 
Another film presented at Cannes – A History of Love and War, an absurdist comedy about Mexican colonial history by Santiago Mohar, received Oldenburg’s Spirit of Cinema award, while the prize for innovation, risk-taking and sheer nerve went to Martina Schöne-Radunski and Lana Cooper, director and lead of German drama Flieg Steil about a female neo-Nazi rocker. 
 
In its best debut feature category, Oldenburg’s winner was Michael J. Long’s Baby Brother, a film about the generational echoes of the trauma of growing up in Liverpool, England. Our review celebrated Long’s ‘stylistic venturousness that is relatively scarce in a first-time filmmaker,’ and there is no doubt that this heart wrenching picture packs a punch. Baby Brother is a world premiere at Oldenburg. 
 
The social short film Nostalgia de un corazón que no ha muerto, (Nostalgia of a (Still) Alive Heart) by Diego Gaxiola won Oldenburg’s film award for the best short. 
 
The 31-st Oldenburg Film Festival ended on Sunday night. This year the event attracted even more people getting over 12 000 visitors which is approximately 20 percent more than last year. “This development merely shows that audiences are thirsting for some real culture and fresh, new and hopefully out-of-the-box films than what offered by Netflix and other streaming sites and that the festival is more than capable to go head-to-head the easily accessible streaming sites. ”