Today, we’re taking a look at winning films at three recently closed festivals from all around the world, starting in the historic jewel of the US South: Savannah, Georgia.

Savannah Film Festival
The Savannah College of Art and Design runs this annual week-long festival, highlighting movies from around the world. The small festival closed on November 1st, giving its top honors to War Eagle, Arkansas — a moving drama about a gifted baseball player and the special friendship he shares with a kid in a wheelchair.
http://www.scad.edu/filmfest/fest08/index.php

Pusan International Film Festival
Now in its 13th year, Pusan has grown into the largest festival in Asia. Over 300 films are screened in this city at the southern tip of South Korea, with a major focus on films from emerging and Third World markets. This year’s edition featured, for instance, a large number of films from Kazakhstan, but the main award went to the Korean film Land of Scarecrows — a strange, slow drama about a transgendered woman and the relationships she has in a small Korean town. The award was actually shared between this film and Japan’s “Naked of Defenses”.
http://www.piff.org/eng/index.asp

São Paolo Mostra Internacional de Cinema
The 32nd annual Mostra closed at the end of October in São Paolo. This popular festival prides itself on featuring a lot of Brazilian movies, but gave its top honor this year to a German film from Emily Atef: The Stranger in Me. This wrenching drama focuses on a seemingly perfect young couple, who’ve just witnessed the birth of their first son. The mother, however, falls into a deep depression and feels no emotional connection to the child she just bore. Sounds like a real laugher!
http://www.mostra.org/32/