The Flemisch actress Veerle Baetens has won the Best Actress Award at the New York based Tribeca Film Festival. She won the award for her part in The Broken Circle Breakdown, directed by Felix van Groeningen.
Jury comments: “We’ve selected a woman who shows herself to be a totally committed and fiercely versatile actress. Veerle Baetens’ character goes from a sunny free spirit to grieving wife and mother, and no matter where we are in the course of that journey, this actress shows us the light burning inside her character, one that both sustains and destroys. She is the heart and soul of the movie, and her performance is nothing short of a tour de force.”
The film also won the Best Screenplay Award. The screenplay was written by Carl Joos and Felix van Groeningen. Jury comments: “The Broken Circle Breakdown is a true original, starting with the eclectic ingredients in its dynamic screenplay: a romance of opposites, a battle between spiritual faith and secular humanism, triggered by unthinkable tragedy, a Flemish bluegrass band. With dialogue that spans the sweetly flirtatious and the operatically confrontational — and with dollops of humor and a pure, deep love of music – the film leaps nimbly back and forth in time to conjure vivid characters who face down literal life-or-death issues. They win both our rapt interest and our greatest empathy; they make us both think and feel.”
Two years ago Carice van Houten won the Best Actress Award at the Tribeca Film Festival for her part in Black Butterflies.