The winner of the succulent $25,000 BIFFDOCS award is… (drumroll) The Queen of Versailles, from venerated photographer Lauren Greenfield.
This is a popular choice, unlike the confronting conclusion to the inaugural award last year, in which redoubtable South Korean independent filmmaker Kim Ki-duk descends into a ghastly creative crisis, suffers in solitary squalor, and gets out of psychic hell by making a film which starts as a documentary and ends as a fiction. Arirang richly deserved the award, but it was tough going for the normal viewer.
