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Swiss documentary wins top prize at Toronto Hot Docs festival

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Doklab

Ostrov – Lost Island has won best international feature documentary at North America’s largest documentary film festival. It thus automatically earns a place at the 2022 Oscars. 

Filmmakers Svetlana Rodina and Laurent Stoop will receive $10,000 (CHF9,030) for the win in their first collaboration.  

The documentary follows a community of fishermen on the island of Ostrov in the Caspian Sea. After the breakup of the Soviet Union the fishermen are left to their own devices and forced to fish illegally.  

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The film was produced by the Swiss company Doklab in co-production with Swiss public broadcaster, SRF, and financed by the Swiss Federal Office of Culture. 

Ostrov – Lost Island, which shows the daily lives of people in Russia, was described as a “truly powerful cinematic experience” by the jury.

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