Nic Balthazar’s Time of My Life and Geoffrey Enthoven’s Come As You Are grabbed podium places at the 23rd International Filmfest Emden-Norderney (6-23 June) in Germany. Time of My Life won both the AOK Movie Award and the ‘silver’ Bernhard Wicki Audience Award, while Come As You Are also made the Bernhard Wicki list in third place.
Producer Peter Bouckaert of Eyeworks was present at the festival’s closing ceremony to pick up the silverware for Time of My Life’s awards, worth €8,000 in total. The Bernhard Wicki Audience Award also makes for a perfect streak for Time of My Life as this is the third Audience Award in as many festivals for the film. Earlier this year, it won over the festival audiences of Tournai (Ramdam Film Festival) and Amsterdam (The End Film Festival).
After a successful theatrical release in its home territory, Time of My Life is now launching internationally with sales agent Films Boutique. The film has already been sold to over ten territories, including France (Bodega Films) and the US (Strand Releasing). Time of My Life is based on the true story of Mario Verstraete, an MS patient who advocated the legalisation of euthanasia for years and who would eventually become the first person to make use of that new law in 2002.
Come As You Are also raked in a bronze Bernhard Wicki Award but that was far from a festival first for the film. In Emden, director Geoffrey Enthoven and producer Mariano Vanhoof of Fobic Films accepted the award, worth €2,000, which makes at least 16 awards for Come As You Are since its world premiere in Montréal. For screenplay writer Pierre De Clercq it’s also not the first time that one of his films has won in Emden. In 2006 Long Weekend, directed by Hans Herbots, grabbed the second Bernhard Wicki Award.
Come as You Are tells the story of three guys in their twenties who love wine and women. Wine they have savoured abundantly, but they have never had a woman. Under the guise of a wine tour they embark on a journey to Spain hoping to get laid there. Nothing will stop them. Not even their handicaps: one is blind, the other is confined to a wheelchair, and the third is completely paralysed.