Don Juan Wins Best Documentary In Göteborg

This year’s Dragon Award for Best Documentary at the Göteborg Film Festival has been handed to Jerzy Sladkowski for his film Don Juan, which made history in November by becoming the first Swedish film to win the IDFA Award for Best Feature Length Documentary.

In Don Juan, twenty-two year old Oleg doesn’t live up to his mother Marina’s idea of a real man. She thinks he’s an autistic loafer, and that all he does is hang around watching TV. The film follows Oleg as he undergoes a series of unconventional treatments, and raises questions about the distinction between introversion and autism.

The jury’s statement said: “The award goes to a captivating story with an unforgettable main character. It is sharp and confident. Modern and at the same time grounded in a classical documentary tradition.”

“The filmmaker has chosen to depict a sensitive persons struggle in a dysfunctional and conservative Russia. In a film that makes us ask the question: What is normal?”