Taming the Garden winner of this years Rödspoven

From this year, the Umeå European Film Festival awards the Rödspoven film prize to a contemporary documentary film. It is a scholarship of SEK 10,000, this year the prize is a collaboration with Umeå Energi.

Of this year’s three nominated films, the winner was Taming the Garden by director Salomé Jashi.

The jury’s motivation is:
“With an effective imagery and a clear line through the film, she has portrayed perhaps the biggest enemy of the climate issue, greed. The film highlights an extreme example of how an individual’s arbitrary will lead to abuse of both people and nature, and which becomes a tangible example of one of the causes of the ongoing climate crisis.”

This years winner was announced during Sundays award ceremony at Bildmuseet. This year’s jury consisted of artist Gunilla Samberg, Professor in forrest ecology Lars Östlund and journalist Jenny Kejerhag

The film Aasivissuit by Jasper Coppes got an honorable mention
by the jury: “A warm and committed film about the short-term exploitation related to traditional culture and indispensable natural values.”

Salomé Jashi
Salomé Jashi was born in Tbilisi, Georgia in 1981. She first studied journalism and worked as a reporter for several years. In 2005 she was awarded a British Council scholarship to study documentary filmmaking at Royal Holloway, University of London. Salomé’s The Dazzling Light of Sunset (2016) was awarded the Main Prize at Visions du Réel’s Regard Neuf Competition as well as at ZagrebDox, Jihlava IDFF, Valdivia IDFF, and several other festivals. Salomé is the founder and works through two production companies: Sakdoc Film and Microcosmos, both producing documentaries and fiction of high artistic quality. She was a fellow of Nipkow Scholarship in 2017 and DAAD Artists- in-Berlin Program in 2020.