Award Rationale

Michele D’Anca receives the Best Director award for a rigorous and highly effective conceptual decision: confining the visible action to two emergency operators inside an office while a human catastrophe unfolds far away, heard through a live telephone call but never directly shown.

The off-screen space becomes the film’s most powerful dramatic field. Through voices, interruptions, silences, and the reactions of the two operators, the direction makes the danger aboard the boat immediate and painfully tangible. This restraint avoids spectacle and keeps the film’s attention on human vulnerability, responsibility, and the urgent attempt to preserve life.

By transforming a telephone conversation into the dramatic centre of the film, D’Anca demonstrates precision in staging, performance direction, sound, and emotional perspective. DISTRESS CALL translates a vast humanitarian crisis into an intimate and morally focused cinematic experience, earning its director this distinction.

Synopsis

Two Italian operators working for Watch the Med Alarm Phone receive an emergency call from the central Mediterranean Sea. For approximately eleven minutes, they remain in contact with a man aboard a sinking rubber boat carrying around one hundred migrants.

As conditions deteriorate, people begin falling into the water, the boat sinks, and communication is suddenly interrupted. The operators continue their efforts without knowing whether a rescue ship will reach the passengers or what their ultimate fate will be.