AICEF Prize for Cross Cultural Filmmaking
2022 Winners

​Directed by Randolph Zaini
Feature

The film explores the themes of bullying, father-son, and male-female relationships within a community of gangsters and police, all subject to the land-grabbing ruthlessness of "gangster" businessmen. The word "preman" first surfaced in colonial Indonesia to refer to local thugs employed by the Dutch to control workers and slaves. Premanism still exists in Indonesia today and is attractive to young men who feel empowered to be "social justice warriors", free of society's conventions. With iconic scenes of ritualized violence and the touching relationship between a deaf-mute father and his young son, the film explores how misguided are the preman. They are not free of anything. 

​ Directed by Nancy Svendsen
 Documentary

The documentary feature film Pasang: In the Shadow of Everest brings to life the untold and inspiring story of Pasang Lhamu Sherpa, the first Nepali woman to summit Mt. Everest who, in her quest, awakened her country to the entrenched inequalities confronted and endured by women and in Nepal. As an uneducated, indigenous woman and a Buddhist in a Hindu kingdom, Pasang’s dream to scale the legendary mountain pit her against family, foreign climbers, her own government, and nature itself. The film follows Pasang as she works tirelessly to pull together the financial and structural support to try for Everest, and the ensuing obstacles and disappointments she had to face and overcome along the way. Her determined pursuit of Everest plays out within the context of her nation’s struggle for democracy and the
emergence of a booming commercial climbing industry in the Himalaya.