- guardian.co.uk, Friday 5 November 2004 01.13 GMT
The Woodsman, by Nicole Kassell, which has won the Satyajit Ray award for a first feature, is a sensitive and even-handed portrait of a paedophile's struggle to stay on the straight and narrow after a spell in prison. It has a stellar central performance from Kevin Bacon.
Jonathan Caouette's Tarnation, which has won the Sutherland trophy for the most original and imaginative first feature film screened at the LFF, is an utterly individual piece of work charting its creator's troubled family history, from his mother's rape and subsequent personality-altering electric shock therapy to his grandmother's Alzheimer's and his own troubled adolescence. A jobbing actor at the time the film became a hit at the Cannes film festival, Caouette said: "The past year has been a whirlwind. The film has literally gone from my computer desktop to a 35mm movie with worldwide distribution deals."
A Belgian road movie about disability, Aaltra, has won the FIPRESCI international critics' award. "The most evil-minded fun anyone has had in the cinema with two wheelchairs and the open road," was the description of one critic.
