21st ANNUAL PALM SPRINGS INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL ANNOUNCES FESTIVAL WINNERS

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo Mercedes-Benz Audience Award for Best Narrative Feature;
The Most Dangerous Man in America Audience Award for Best Documentary Feature;
Involuntary receives FIPRESCI Award;
A Brand New Life receives New Voices/New Visions Award;
Eyes Wide Open receives John Schlesinger Award

Palm Springs, CA (January 17, 2010) –The 21st Annual Palm Springs International Film Festival
announced this year's award winners at a luncheon at Spencer's
Restaurant on Sunday, January 17, 2010. The Festival, held from January
5-18, 2010, screened 189 films from 70 countries, including 40 of the
65 foreign language entries for this year's Academy Awards®. Palm
Springs' increasingly popular Festival continues to expand its diverse
programming of quality independent and foreign films, setting the stage
for the year's film festival circuit.

Festival Director Darryl
Macdonald added, "Record attendance, supremely smooth operations and
enormously positive audience and industry feedback made this year's
Festival an unqualified success on every level. In a year when so many
festivals worldwide are reeling from the double whammy of falling
ticket sales and diminishing sponsorships, it's hugely heartening to
see Palm Springs reverse that trend and enliven audiences into the
bargain."

AWARDS

This year's Festival attendees selected The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (Sweden/Denmark/Germany) directed by Niels Arden Oplev, as the Mercedes-Benz Audience Award for Best Narrative Feature. From the best-selling novel, this gripping thriller brings to mind both The Silence of the Lambs and Se7en
in its tale of an investigative journalist trying to crack a
40-year-old murder that may have been the work of a still-at-large
serial killer.

The runner-up film was The World is Big and Salvation Lurks Around the Corner (Bulgaria/Germany/Slovenia). Other audience narrative favorites include: Backyard (Mexico), Bride Flight (Netherlands), For a Moment, Freedom (Austria/France), I Love You Phillip Morris (USA/France), Max Manus (Norway/Denmark/Germany), A Matter of Size (Isreael/France/Germany), The Over the Hill Band (Belgium), Today's Special (USA), White Wedding (South Africa) and Winter in Wartime (Netherlands/Lithuania).

The Most Dangerous Man in America: Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers (USA) directed by Judith Ehrlich and Rick Goldsmith received the Audience Award for Best Documentary Feature.
On October 1, 1969, Daniel Ellsberg began smuggling a top-secret report
about the history of the Vietnam War out of a safe in his office and,
ultimately, into the pages of The New York Times. This
gripping documentary explores the profound political and legal
consequences that followed, and Ellsberg's personal journey from
government insider to anti-war activist.

The runner-up film was Inside Hana's Suitcase (Canada/Czech Republic). Other audience documentary favorites include: The Art of the Steal (USA), Dumbstruck (USA/Japan/Bahamas), The Great Contemporary Art Bubble (UK/Germany/France/Netherlands), Learning from Light: The Vision of I.M. Pei (USA/Qatar), Nobody's Perfect (Germany), On These Shoulders We Stand (USA), Only When I Dance (UK/Brazil), Sergio (USA), Soundtrack for a Revolution (USA), The Sun Behind The Clouds: Tibet's Struggle for Freedom (India/UK/USA/Austria) and The Topp Twins: Untouchable Girls (New Zealand).

Both winners will receive the Kennedy Statue ("Entertainer").

A
special jury of international film critics reviewed the official Best
Foreign Language submissions to the Academy Awards® screened at this
year's Festival to award the FIPRESCI Award for Best Foreign Language Film of the Year. This year's FIPRESCI jury members include Jonas Holmberg, Jan Stuart and Katherine Tulich.

The jury selected Involuntary,
Sweden's official entry for the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar,
directed by Ruben Östlund. A quirky comedy about the nature of group
dynamics: Two teenage girls take risqué pictures and get drunk; a group
of young men experiment with sex; a righteous teacher tries to set
things "right;" and a bus driver holds a group of passengers prisoner.
As described by juror Jan Stuart, "Involuntary investigates
the subject of group think and individual responsibility through an
interwoven series of fraught social situations. Ostlund, who also wrote
the screenplay, deploys a diabolically askew camera lens throughout,
deliberately obscuring our vision in ways that mine maximal tension
from each of his mini-dramas and implicate the audience in the
disruptive behavior of his characters."

Tedo Bekhauri received the FIPRESCI Award for Best Actor for his performance in The Other Bank (Georgia/Kazakhstan) directed by George Ovashvili, and Anne Dorval received the FIPRESCI Award for Best Actress for her performance in I Killed My Mother
(Canada) directed by Xavier Dolan. Commenting on the acting awards
Stuart said, "Diminuitive non-professional star Tedo Bekhauri gives a
quietly galvanizing portrayal of a 12-year-old refugee tossed to the
winds by the Georgian-Abkhazia war. Anne Dorval was honored for her
nuanced performance as a bruised and bruising matriarch mired in
love/hate land with her teenage son."

The New Voices/New Visions
category features films from twelve new international directors whose
first film has been selected by the Festival's programming team to
represent the best work of previously unheralded talents emerging in
the narrative film making field with a particularly high standard of
accomplishment and innovative technique. All films in the section are
U.S. premieres without American distribution and were adjudicated by
Arianna Bocco from IFC Films, Nancy Gerstman from Zeitgeist Films and
Sara Rose from Apparition.

The jury selected A Brand New Life
(South Korea/France) directed by Ounie Lecomte. It's 1975. Jinhee is
nine years old, and the life she knows is about to be shattered.
Inexplicably abandoned by her father in a Catholic orphanage outside
Seoul, Jinhee begins an extraordinary emotional journey marked by rage
and hope, death and rebirth. The winner receives a Chihuly sculpture
and a $60,000 Panavision camera package.

Commenting on the
award, the jury said, "We were unanimously impressed by the entire
program of films in their scope and ambition and individual success in
articulating a personal vision. Although a difficult decision, one film
ultimately stood out for its accomplished vision of an emotional
journey that was both powerful and heartbreaking, yet hopeful. This
director's skill in working with a young lead actress led to a visceral
narrative that evoked childhood and loss and all of its
vulnerabilities. We award the prize to Ounie Lecomte's A Brand New Life."

The New Voices/New Visions jury also added, "On a different note, we'd like to give an honorable mention to Devil's Town
directed by Vladimir Paskaljevic for his audacious and challenging
satire of modern day Serbia. The film cleverly uses a national
obsession with tennis to construct a world with strong characters where
futility and hopelessness reign."

Other films screened for this award were: Angel at Sea (Belgium/Canada), Beautiful Kate (Australia), A Brotherhood (Denmark), Heliopolis (Egypt), Huacho (Chile/France), La Pivellina (Austria/Italy), The Man Beyond the Bridge (India), Northless (Mexico/Spain), Nothing Personal (Netherlands/Ireland) and What You Don't See (Germany/Austria).

Out of 67 feature or documentary film directing debuts, Haim Tabakman received the John Schlesinger Award for Outstanding First Feature (Narrative or Documentary) for the film Eyes Wide Open
(Israel). The film is a taboo-breaking drama about a married butcher
who falls in love with a seductive younger man in Jerusalem's insular
ultra-orthodox community. This honor, selected by the Festival
programming team, acknowledges the work of a first-time filmmaker whose
narrative or documentary feature represents particular distinction and
the promise of a major filmmaking career. The winner receives a Kennedy
Statue ("Entertainer") and a DVD package provided by Facets Media.

Commenting
on the selection, Director of Programming Helen du Toit said, "The
Festival was blessed to have 67 films by first-time directors in its
line-up this year – each of them exceptional in its own right.
Collectively, these films represented the flood of exciting new talent
that is currently revitalizing the cinema worldwide, and choosing a
'best' or most worthy film to present this award to from among them has
been one of the most difficult tasks we've faced as programmers this
year. The award's namesake, John Schlesinger, would have truly been
heartened by the quality of filmmaking each of these films evince."

The programmers also made two Special Mentions: Queen to Play (France) and Samson & Delilah (Australia) directed by Caroline Bottaro and directed by Warwick Thornton.

Letters to Father Jacob (Finland), directed by Klaus Härö, received the Bridging the Borders Award
presented by Cinema Without Borders to the film that is the most
successful in bringing the people of our world closer together. In the
latest from the talent behind the PSIFF 2006 Audience Award Winner, a
simple but transcendent story about faith and human frailty achieves a
state of grace. Centering on a tough ex-con temporarily serving as an
amanuensis for a blind pastor in rural Finland, the director's
magisterial control renders predictable material into something fresh
and heart-rending.

The Best of the Fest screenings will take place on Monday, January 18. Click here for a complete list of screenings.

The Festival's 21st Annual Awards Gala is presented by Cartier
and sponsored by "Entertainment Tonight" and Mercedes-Benz. Renewing
sponsors of this year's Festival are Title Sponsor The City of Palm
Springs and Presenting Sponsors The Desert Sun, the City of Indian
Wells, the Agua Caliente Band of Cahuilla Indians, Spencer's Restaurant
and KPSP Local 2. Major Sponsors include Bank of America, Ketel One,
Johnnie Walker and Don Julio, Regal Entertainment Group, Wells Fargo,
Verizon, Integrated Wealth Management, Guthy-Renker, Wessman
Development, Ocean Properties Development, Chihuly Art Glass and Chop
House Edit.

Your source for tourism information visit, PalmSpringsUSA.com.

For Palm Springs International Film Festival information, call 760-322-2930 or 800-898-7256 or visit www.psfilmfest.org