‘La Bola Negra’ Wins Denver Film Festival Top Prize as More Regional Fests Boost Oscar Hopefuls

The Sly Stallone behind-the-scenes biopic "I Play Rocky" won the narrative feature audience award, repeating a pattern that started in Toronto.

Regional film festivals matter to a movie’s more cosmic position in the awards season, even if it started somewhere like Venice, Toronto, Telluride, Cannes, or even Sundance. They generate excitement from real-world audiences (and often Oscar voters, as in Middleburg, Virginia), and they also help unspool headlines that keep films top of mind for those who follow the race.

The 49th Denver Film Festival, held in the hip, high-altitude Colorado city every year, just wrapped its annual event — which this year ran October 22 to November 1. Denver Film CEO Kevin Smith, artistic director Matthew Campbell, and their team brought out special guests including Carrie Coon, John Leguizamo, John Cho, D’Arcy Carden, Peter Gamble, Indya Moore, Hans Petter Moland, and more to receive prizes and be feted with special tributes. Several of these, including Coon for “The Liberation” and Leguizamo for “The Odyssey,” are in the awards mix. Overall, Denver showcased 130 films, including many awards season favorites.

I served on the documentary jury this year and awarded the Maysles Brothers Award to one of the year’s most revered docs. We chose the nonfiction portrait of adolescence “Whispers in May,” winner of this year’s CPH:DOX and from Chinese filmmaker Dongnan Chen, which is still seeking distribution. Per our statement penned with Vanity Fair’s Chris Murphy and producer Justine Suzanne Jones as fellow jurors, it’s “a vivid and compassionate portrait of female friendship in the twilight of adolescence” and “formally daring and emotionally authentic.” Other films in the category included “Once Upon a Time in Harlem,” “Edward Said: Between Worlds,” “Rehearsals for a Revolution,” “Nuisance Bear,” and “SUMO: Spirit Weighs Nothing.”

Los Javis’ “La Bola Negra,” which just won the BFI London Film Festival audience award after winning that same prize at TIFF in September, won the Krzysztof Kieslowski Award for Best Feature Film. The Spanish epic about gay desire and Federico García Lorca is locked in for multiple Oscar nominations at this point, with its awards streak going back to Best Director at Cannes in May.

The Audience Award for narrative feature, just as it did at the Virginia Film Festival in October, went to Peter Farrelly’s Sly Stallone behind-the-scenes biopic “I Play Rocky.” The film, starring charming breakout Anthony Ippolito as the “Rocky” star/screenwriter, was the runner-up to “La Bola Negra” in Toronto’s audience award category. “I Play Rocky” is in select theaters Thursday ahead of a November 20 wide release, and its popularity as an audience favorite is proving hard to best at fests.

See the full list of Denver Film Festival winners below.

Audience Awards

Narrative Feature: “I Play Rocky”
Director: Peter Farrelly
Country: United States

Documentary Feature: “Good Help”
Director: Rebekah Henderson, Lilah Park
Country: United States

Short Film: “We Were Here”
Director: Pranav Bhasin
Country: India

Juried Awards

Krzysztof Kieslowski Award for Best Feature Film: “La Bola Negra”
Director: Javier Ambrossi, Javier Calvo
Country: Spain, France

Maysles Brothers Award for Best Documentary: “Whispers in May”
Filmmakers: Dongnan Chen, Jjippupmop Qihuo, Mathxiemop Atnyop, Lhithxamop Itgop, and Lhithxamop Itsi
Country: Hong Kong, Netherlands, South Korea, Sweden

True Grit Award (local film prize): “The River”
Director: Mara Tasker
Country: United States

Short Film Awards

Grand Jury Award: “Hyena”
Director: Altay Ulan Yang
Country: China, United States

True Grit Short Film Award: “End of Things”
Director: Bruce Tetsuya
Country: United States

Marilyn Marsh Saint-Veltri Award for Best Student Animation Short: “Hunting”
Director: Lea Favre
Country: Switzerland