'Planet of Snails' tops IDFA honours

''Planet of Snails,'' South Korean helmer Seung-Jun Yi's feature docu in regards to the daily existence and adoration for a tough of hearing and blind guy, has won the VPRO IDFA award for top feature within the 24th annual Worldwide Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam (IDFA), it absolutely was introduced inside a ceremony Friday evening. IDFA's top prize includes a ?12,500 (U.S.$16,546) cash prize. ''Snails,'' which received its worldwide preem here, is produced by CreativEast. Paris-based CATandDocs is handling world sales. IDFA's five-person feature competish jury also gave its special award to Emad Burnat and Guy Davidi's world-preeming ''5 Broken Cameras,'' a portrait from the Palestinian village battling encroaching Jewish funds over a long time. Pic also nabbed IDFA's aud award and $6,619 cash. Our planet's greatest docu fest and mart, which opened up up November. 16 with ''The Ambassador'' from helmer Mads Brugger (''The Red-colored-colored Chapel'') and concludes Sunday, saw accurate documentation public aud from the thought 200,000+, up from 2010's count of 180,000. Other IDFA competish individuals who win include Jorge Gaggero's ''Montenegro'' (best mid-length docu), Xun Yu's 'The Vanishing Spring Light (best first film) and Jessica Gorter's ''900 Days'' (best Nederlander docu). Micha X. Peled's feature ''Bitter Seed items,'' in regards to the plight of Indian cotton maqui berries maqui berry farmers as well as the third in the trilogy about globalization, won best Eco-friendly Screen (atmosphere) docu together with the Oxfam Global Justice award. A week ago ''Last Days Here,'' from Phillie's Don Argott and Demian Fenton, won best music documentary. Pic was examined in IDFA PLAY, the fest's first music docu sidebar. IDFA presented 340 film and trans-media docus to public and industry auds this year. The opening weekend was mostly about preems and parties, but a posse from ''Focus Forward''-the innovation-designed quantity of three-minute documents launched last September by video author Cinelan along with Whirlpool-needed transpires with announce it's added seven filmmakers towards the roster. On Monday IDFA moved into full-on biz mode with the start of the three-day Forum. The prestige worldwide co-financing event has modified lately to reflect changes available on the market (less home home windows, tight budgets), the emergence of third-sector funders and new techniques for telling and viewing non-fiction tales. This Years slate incorporated 57 projects (features, series, trans-media) trying to find funding partners or future customers in general-tables and individual meets. This year IDFA reviews 2,670 local and worldwide site visitors (producers, customers, filmmakers etc.) , the rise from 2010's headcount of two,477. Greater than 200 U.S. site visitors attended IDFA 2011. Contact the number newsroom at news@variety.com