Palm Springs – August 26 , 2008: Today a panel made up of select members of the Palm Springs International Shortfest jury, along with members of the Festival’s programming team voted Angels Die in the Soil as the winner of the Cinema Without Borders Best International Film Award.
The award ceremony for the 2008 Palm Springs International ShortFest Film Festival was held at Camelot Theatres and Bijan Tehrani, Editor in Chief of Cinema Without Borders, presented the Cinema Without Borders Best International Film Award.
“International short film authors and directors are becoming a strong voice in cinema today. They introduce new ideas and new visual styles for the language of film. The international films which participated at the Palm Springs International ShortFest were a mirror reflecting
the shocking and true image of the world we are living in.” said Bijan.
“In that spirit, Cinema Without Borders presented the Best International Film Award at the 2008 Palm Springs International ShortFest to an international film that was most successful in telling the story of our time in a brilliant way, Angels Die in the Soil.”
Angels Die in the Soil is the story of an Iraqi-Kurdish girl who earns a living for her ill father by selling the bones of Iranian soldiers martyred during the Iran-Iraq war. One day she stumbles on a terrorist incident involving an American soldier on her way back home, and she decides to try to help him.
Babak Amini , director of the Angels Die in the Soil, was born in 1978 in the Kurdestan province of Iran. He went to school in Tehran and graduated with a degree in philosophy. Babak worked for 10 years as assistant to director Bahman Ghobadi in his films ‘A Time for Drunken Horses’, ‘Turtles Can Fly’, and ‘Half Moon’. Amini’s Angels Die in the Soil has also appeared in the 16th Archipelago Film Festival in Italy and the 2008 EcoVision Festival as well as the 24th Festroia Film Festival in Portugal, Berlin’s Kurdish Film Festival and the 9th Seoul Film Festival.
Cast & Credits
Director: Babak Amini
Principal Cast: Donya Ghobadi, Pedram Seyfuri
Screenwriter/Producer: Babak Amini
Editor: Mahsoomeh Shahazari
Director of Photography: Meisam Riahl
Sound Recorder: Vahid Hajilooi
Music: Shahram Alimohammadi
Producer: Babak Amini
Cinema Without Borders has been awarding the best International Film since 2007 at the Palm Springs International ShortFest. Last year, Cinema Without Borders awarded its Best International Film Award to Milan (a co-production of Germany, Serbia, and 
Montenegro), directed by Michael Kezele.
For the 2008 award, Cinema Without Borders had nominated the following five films at the 2008 Palm Springs Short FilmFest. The winner of this year’s award was chosen by a panel made up of select members of the Palm Springs International Shortfest jury, along with members of the Festival’s programming team, who had decide the winner of the CWB’s Best International Film from the list of five nominees. The five nominated films were previously selected by representatives from Cinema Without Borders from among a shortlist of the Festival’s international film submissions. Jury members at this year’s event were actor Bill Pullman; Eileen Arandiga, Festival Director of the Worldwide Short Film Festival in Toronto; Dana Harris, editor Variety.com; Sydney Levine of Film Finders; and Dragan Milinkovic, Serbian film academic and producer.
The five nominated films were: Subira (Kenya) Directed by Ravneet “Sippy” Chadha, By Night (Germany) Directed by Julia Scharz, Cairn (Norway) Directed by Hanne Larsen, Crossbow (Australia) Directed by David Michod, and Angels Die in the Soil (Iran) Directed by Babak Amini