Film about Paraguay’s recycled orchestra sweeps audience award at Thessaloniki Doc Fest

“Landfill Harmonic – Symphony of the Human Spirit,” a movie about The Recycled Orchestra of Cateura, a Paraguayan musical youth group of kids living next to one of South America's largest landfills, scooped the Peter Wintonick Audience Award in the international section of the annual Thessaloniki Documentary Festival (TDF) this weekend. Shot by Bradi Allgood and Graham Townsley, the documentary also opened this year’s event on March 11.

The Audience Award for a Greek film went to “Argo Navis” by Susanne Bausinger and Stelios Efstathopoulos, about a 2003 project to create a replica of the ancient Greek penteconter warship.

Jonas Poher Rasmussen’s “What He Did,” the story of psychologist and writer Jens Michael Schau, who in 1988 killed his boyfriend of 13 years, Christian Kampmann, in a fit of jealousy picked up the International Federation of Film Critics (FIPRESCI) Prize for a foreign documentary while, in the Greek selection, the jury gave top honors to “Whispers of the Sky” by Maro Anastopoulou, which shows how people of the Aegean island of Amorgos still rely on natural signs to predict coming changes in the weather.