Boy from Heaven wins the main prize in Lübeck

Tawfeek Barhom in Boy from Heaven. Photo: Atmo Film.

Boy from Heaven by Tarik Saleh won the prestigious NDR Film Prize at the 64th edition of the Nordic Film Days in Lübeck. The film also won the INTERFILM Church Prize, which was awarded during the closing ceremony. The film is Sweden's Oscar entry for Best International Feature Film.

Boy from Heaven won no less than two awards at the Nordic Film Days in Lübeck during the festival's gala ceremony.

The NDR Film award is the festival's biggest prize. Awarded annually since 1990, the prize goes to a "feature film of special artistic quality" which should "reflect society with an independent creative language and explore new perspectives regarding content and aesthetics".

– It is a great honor to win the main prize in Lübeck and the Church prize. Our goal was always to make a film that wouldn’t be locked in time and space. It moves me deeply to be recognized for our hard work, says Tarik Saleh.

– Boy from Heaven, which has already been sold to over 50 countries, is something as unusual as a Swedish film entirely in Arabic, which gives it a strong international touch, say producers Kristina Åberg and Fredrik Zander, Atmo Rights.

Tarik Saleh's political thriller about fisherman’s son Adam, who is thrown into a brutal power struggle between Egypt’s religious and political elite, won the Best Screenplay Award (Prix du scénario) at the 75th Cannes Film Festival earlier this year, as well as the François Chalais Prize (Prix François Chalais), which was created to pay tribute to French journalist and film historian François Chalais. It is Saleh’s new film after the success of The Nile Hilton Incident, which won the Grand Jury Award at the Sundance Film Festival in 2017 and Guldbaggen – the Swedish national award – for Best film in 2018. 

Boy from Heaven will open the Stockholm International Film Festival on Wednesday November 9, and will be released in Swedish theatres on November 18. The film is distributed domestically by Triart Film, with international sales handled by Memento International.

More information, synopsis etc: Boy from Heaven (2022) - The Swedish Film Database.