General statement of the jury:

We have seen short films in all categories. Films from all around the world, and through the films and their stories we have met all kinds of people. We have taken part in their lives, we have gotten knowledge about their troubles and their pains, their desires and hopes, the paradoxes of their society - in strange ways, in beautiful ways, in rough and harsh ways.

And this had not been possible to express in other medium than in film, the independent films, the films that are made unrestricted by commercial or industrial constrains. This was also the topic of the festival: Profit versus art.

Film is not only pictures, but also sounds. This film explores in an interesting way the differences in how we experience and react to the sound scapes of our surroundings.

The prize for best domestic film goes to the film Sound of Silence by Pero Pavlovic.

The prize for best experimental film: This film was grouped among the animation films but we choose to consider it in every respect a filmatic experiment in combining the animated and the natural in very creative and original way. The prize goes to the italian film „Muto“ by Blu.

This is traditional drawing animation film, but it tells an interesting story. He explores it in every detail, and with a metaphorical edge to it that never gets easy made. It is a strong vision that we will remember long after.

The prize for best animation goes to the argentinian film „The Employment“ by Santiago Bou Grasso.

Some man made phenomenon in our surroundings are so established that they at last seem natural, and we stop wondering why they are there. This filmmaker has an original personal perspective on such an well known phenomenon in society, and he makes us follow him in his vision. Also, he manages in a wonderful way to make what we usually see as the ordinary dull everyday life persons interesting to us.

The documentary prize of the Kratkofil festival 2009 goes to the russian film Booths by Mikhail Zheleznikov from Russia.

Films are often about making the impossible believable to us. And in a way this film does just that. Cultural diversities makes us total strangers to eachother. In this film a very outspoken guy protests on being judged because of his background, his outfit and lack of cultural education. And he is not afraid of taking the short cut/way to obtain his goals. This film succeeds in make us believe in the possibility of such a meeting of two so different but at the same time so alike and volnerable loveseeking persons in a park.

The prize for best Fiction film goes to the french film: „Alter Ego“ made by Cedric Prevost from France.

The jury has decided to give a special mention to The Iranian film Solitude by Merhdan Sheikhan from iran. This film has a strong vision and a technical excellence, both visually and in its use of sounds.

The Grand Prix for the best film overall.

In a world with so much suffering, so much pain, and we are confronted with it every day in newspapers and television news, and out of necessity we have made up an emotional distance to it. That means: we take in the information but does not let it affect us any more.

The topic of this film is an ordinary circumstance known all over the world.

But here the filmmaker makes us open our eyes and hearts, we see some of the people involved, not as victimes or categorized only as part of a group - that which make us stop bothering about their troubles, but as individuals, complex fascinating and very humain people with the same frustrations and longings and desires as the rest of us. And that makes us identify and bother.

This documentary film is succeeding in a creative and entertaining manner with a lot of humour to treat a rather tragic subject: the life of the assylants, here stuck in finnish smalltown, a place so far away from their natural homeplace as they possibly can come.

The Grand Prix winner 2009 at the Kratkofil Film festival goes to the Finnish film: „Ghosts“ by Jan Ljäs from Finland.