MAY 31, 2022–ETERNAL SPRING (長春) nabbed both the Jury and Audience prizes for Best International Documentary during its West Coast premiere at the Mammoth Lakes Film Festival over the Memorial Day weekend, according to a summary of the festival in MovieMaker Magazine. Each award carries a cash prize of $1,000 USD.
The film explores themes of freedom of expression and the role of art in depicting trauma through its hybrid animated-documentary form. The documentary centers on a dramatic hijacking of the state TV airwaves in China by adherents of the persecuted Falun Gong spiritual group in 2002.
The full story with all winners from the 8th MLFF in the Mammoth Lakes resort community in the Eastern Sierra region of California can be found here in MovieMaker Magazine.
Eternal Spring’s latest double-win (the film earned two prizes at both Hot Docs and Thessaloniki documentary festivals) was also covered in Awards Daily. You can read that story here.