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Australian documentary My Thai Bride wins award at Hot Docs

David Tucker's My Thai Bride has won the award for Best Mid-Length Documentary at Hot Docs.

Held in Toronto, Canada, Hot Docs is North America’s largest documentary festival, with this year’s audience numbers reaching an estimated 165,000.

My Thai Bride was supported by Screen Australia and screened in Hot Docs’ International Spectrum program – a curated competition of diverse works from around the world. The film details the ensuing demise of Ted, a 46-year-old Welshman, after his marriage to a poor Thai bar girl.

On awarding the prize the jury said, “My Thai Bride is a film that takes the story of an unlikely couple and through subtle analysis extends their human dramas into a moving examination of political, cultural and economic power dynamics. It is a film that destabilises its viewer’s empathy through a nuanced and even-handed portrayal of charged, contradictory terrain, and reframes who exactly is the conqueror and conquered.”

Australian documentaries Despite the Gods (d: Penny Vozniak) and Scarlet Road (d: Catherine Scott) also screened at the festival.

For more information about Hot Docs visit their website.

DESPITE THE GODS
(85 mins)
Production Company House of Gary
Director Penny Vozniak
Producer Karina Astrup
Synopsis An overly ambitious Bollywood/Hollywood production about a man-eating snake goddess becomes an exercise in self-actualisation rather than effective filmmaking. An unforgiving behind-the-scenes look at Jennifer Lynch’s disastrous return to filmmaking after a 15-year hiatus.

MY THAI BRIDE
Production Company Showreal Productions
Director/Producer David Tucker
Writer Ashleigh Hooker
Synopsis Ted marries a Thai bar girl but when his money runs out the marriage ends and he returns to the UK destitute, having learned what his Thai wife already knew: without money you lose everything.

SCARLET ROAD
Production Company Paradigm Pictures
Director/Co-producer Catherine Scott
Producer Pat Fiske
Synopsis Driven by her passion for free sexual expression and the rights of sex trade workers, Australian sex trade worker Rachel Wotton specialises in a long over-looked clientele – those with disabilities.