Georgia’s Oscar hopeful scoops major award at Norway film fest

A Georgian co-produced film to win an Oscar at next year’s awards has won another international prize after screening at Norway’s largest film festival.

Filmmaker Rusudan Glurjidze's award-winning feature film House of Others scooped one of the principal awards at the Bergen International Film Festival (BIFF).

Today is the last day of the eight-day festival, held in the port city of Bergen. Since September 20 the city has screened over 160 films from countries including France, Poland, Norway, the United States and China.

See the trailer for Rusudan Glurjidze's 2016 film 'House of Others' below:

When winners of this year’s BIFF were announced, it was revealed Glurjidze's film had won the Cinema Extraordinaire prize.

House of Others is a co-production between Georgia, Russia, Spain and Croatia. 

Several months ago House of Others won a principal prize at the prestigious Karlovy Vary International Film Festival in the Czech Republic.

The Czech festival jury praised Glurjidze's camerawork and vision, which allowed the film to "hold its ground with those of [famed late Soviet director Andrei] Tarkovsky and [Russian filmmaker Andrey] Zvyagintsev, confirming the unprecedented rise of Georgian cinema."

A scene from the feature film 'House of Others'. Photo from the Bergen International Film Festival.

Glurjidze's work also screened at the 64th annual San Sebastian Film Festival in Spain this month, and was named as Georgia's entry for the next year's Academy Awards.

The film is a drama that tells the story of two families that survive the destructive Abkhazia war in Georgia in the early 1990s but struggle to find peace as they set about beginning a new life in houses cleared of their expelled owners.

The Bergen International Film Festival was established in 2000 to mark the city's status of that year's European Capital of Culture. This year’s event hosted visitors at seven venues throughout the city. 

Festival organisers said the BIFF was "one of the most successful events to take place during the celebration of the Cultural City with almost 20,000 visitors" in 2000.

Last year the festival featured more than 160 films and hosted 57,000 visiting cinema enthusiasts.

The full list of this year’s winners can be found here.