The Armenian festival’s international competition showcased the Icelandic feature along with Mika Gustafson’s Paradise is Burning.

It’s a wrap for the 21st edition of the Golden Apricot International Film Festival, which ran from 7 to 14 July in Yerevan, Armenia’s capital.

This year’s top prizes went to Caroline von der Tann’s Italian-German doc The Gospel According to Ciretta (Il Vangelo secondo Ciretta) and Guto Parente’s Brazilian drama A Strange Path (Estranho Caminho), which snagged the Golden Apricot and Silver Apricot in the international feature competition, respectively.

However, the jury made up of Alexander Payne, Peter Scarlet, Krikor Beledian, Alexandria Bombach and Jaime Noguera also bestowed a special mention upon Ninna Pálmadóttir’s debut Solitude (Einvera).

The Icelandic picture, penned by Rúnar Rúnarsson, follows Gunnar (Þröstur Leó Gunnarsson), a silent farmer who leads a quiet life in the countryside. One day, the man is forced by the state to sell his home. Thus he relocates to Reykjavik, where he meets a 10-year-old paper boy (Hermann Samúelsson). The bond they establish proves to be transformative for them both. The feature world-premiered at Toronto last year, and later played at several prestigious gatherings, including Göteborg, Beijing, Chicago and Palm Springs. It also received four nominations at the Eddas, Iceland’s national film awards, including Best Film.

Meanwhile, Golden Apricot’s international competition showcased another Nordic title, Mika Gustafson’s Paradise is Burning (Paradiset brinner), a co-production between Sweden, Denmark, Finland and Italy. The plot zooms in on three sisters aged 7 to 15, who live alone after their mother vanishes for whole swathes of time. When the social services demand a family meeting, the oldest sister Laura plans to find a stand-in for their mother. The feature won the prize for Best Director at Venice’s Orizzonti last year.

Finally, a third title with Nordic involvement, Farah Kassem’s We Are Inside (Nahnou Fil Dakhil), scooped the Golden Apricot for Best Film in the regional competition. This deeply personal documentary, a co-production between Lebanon’s Road2Films, Denmark’s Good Company Pictures and Al Jazeera Documentary Channel, sees the director returning to her hometown of Tripoli after 15 years of absence. There her widowed, 82 year old father Mustapha lives with their long-time Sri Lankan maid, Nana. Farah and Mustapha try to find a common language to have one last conversation, and that language will turn out to be the only one he understands: poetry. Before Yerevan, the feature was world-premiered at Nyon’s Visions du Réel in April.