By Pamela K. Johnson
AFI FEST Daily News

FISH TANK, Andrea Arnold’s coming of age tale about a girl in a dangerous relationship with an older man, and WOMAN WITHOUT PIANO, Javier Rebollo’s film about a bored wife who sneaks out after her hubby’s asleep, took top honors in the New Lights competition last night at Grauman’s Chinese Theatre.

Eleven films competed for bragging rights, and only one was supposed to win them, but the jury, comprised of two actresses, two filmmakers and a writer, felt compelled to give the prize to two equally deserving directors. They also awarded a special jury prize for AJAMI, Scandar Copti and Yaron Shani’s impressive collaboration, which plunges the audience into a neighborhood where Israeli and Palestinian neighbors try to get along, with disappointing results.

Actress Angela Bassett, who headed the New Lights jury panel, announced the winners at a special ceremony in the Entertainment Weekly Lounge after the screening of the Closing Night Gala film, A SINGLE MAN, by Tom Ford, better known for his exploits in the fashion world.

Earlier, Bassett and two of the other jurors chatted about the challenging process that led to their decisions.

“Art is very personal,” said Hong Kong filmmaker Yonfan, who sat next to Bassett and French actress Julie Delpy. (The other two jurors, writer Bill Krohn and Argentine filmmaker-programmer Sergio Wolf, were not present.) Though Yonfan initially rooted for a film that he personally liked, he says he realized that it was about coming to a consensus, which meant winnowing the 11 films down to a pool of a few that they all liked, and from which they could agree on a winner.

“They were so completely different. It was like apples and oranges,” Bassett said of the films. “There were different subjects, different points of view.” But across the board, she found everything she saw “remarkable.”

Delpy was initially reluctant to sign on as a juror, because a previous experience soured her on the process. Some years back, when she was on a panel in France, she and another juror agreed on the film they believed should win, but a third juror was rabidly passionate about a different project.

“He laid down on the floor in front of the door, stabbing himself with a fork for eight hours,” she recalled. Initially startled, she later got hungry and grew impatient, waiting for the spoilsport to move out of the way.

Fortunately for the New Lights jurors, they were able to keep deliberations down to about two hours. They believe the fact that they awarded three of the 11 films prizes is to their credit.

Says Krohn: “We were looking for new lights–people who will make a contribution down the line.” And that’s a situation where, you might say, more is more.

Pamela K. Johnson was a 2007 Fellow in the AFI Directing Workshop for Women. She can be emailed at pjohn5@aol.com.