‘Hotel Rwanda’ wins AFI award

“Hotel Rwanda,” director Terry George’s drama set during the 1994 Rwandan genocide and starring Don Cheadle, won the audience award for best feature film at AFI Fest 2004.

Wash Westmoreland’s “Gay Republicans” received the best documentary prize from festival-goers for its look at the gay marriage debate from the perspective of the Log Cabin Republicans, a conservative political organization.

Voted best short film was “My Parents (Meine Eltern),” director Neele Leana Vollmar’s tale of a woman embarrassed to bring her boyfriend home to meet her bourgeois family.

The Mexican film “Duck Season (Temporada de Patos)” was selected the Grand Jury Prize winner in the international feature competition. Fernando Eimbcke’s black-and-white debut focuses on four people brought together in Mexico City during a power outage. The jurors were actor-filmmaker Joshua Jackson, actress Emily Mortimer and film scholar Peter Scarlet.

The Grand Jury prize for best international documentary went to Avi Lewis’ “The Take.” The film details the protest of 30 auto-parts workers who camped out in their closed-down factory and refused to leave. The documentary jury, consisting of filmmakers Xan Cassavetes, Paolo Di Florio and Allen Hughes, also awarded a special mention to Robin Scovill’s “The Other Side of AIDS.”

The international shorts jury -- actress Shoreh Aghdashloo, film critic Wade Major and actor-filmmaker Ray McKinnon -- awarded Taika Waititi’s “Two Cars, One Night” the top prize and gave a special mention to Chris Landreth’s “Ryan.”

AFI Fest 2004 organizers reported a 20% increase in attendance over last year’s event. The 10-day festival concluded Sunday evening with the U.S. premiere of the Spanish drama “The Sea Inside,” starring Javier Bardem.