War films take top honors at Tribeca Festival in NY

NEW YORK, May 7 (Reuters) A documentary about the Iraq war and a film about the lasting impact on soldiers' lives of a conflict more than 20 years ago won the top awards at the Tribeca Film Festival in New York today.

War and global politics were the theme of many of the award-winning films at the festival which returned this year to its somber roots in the aftermath of the September. 11 attacks.

''War Tapes,'' a documentary filmed by National Guard soldiers in Iraq, won the best documentary award, while best narrative feature went to ''Blessed by Fire,'' an Argentine film about the 1982 war with Britain over the Falkland Islands, or ''Las Malvinas'' as they are called in Spanish.

Now in its fifth year, the festival was founded by Robert de Niro shortly after the September. 11 attacks as a way to help revitalize the Tribeca area around the World Trade Center.

''We're a festival that our roots started because of an act of war, we tend to attract pictures that are serious, that tend to have these themes,'' festival director Jane Rosenthal told Reuters after the awards were presented.

The festival opened this year with ''United 93,'' a dramatization of the events on one of the hijacked planes, and many of the 274 films and shorts focused on political issues.

''The work that film makers around the world are doing are stories that are sometimes not being told by the media,'' Rosenthal said. ''These are difficult stories to tell.'' CANDID AND INSTANTANEOUS ''War Tapes'' was directed by Deborah Scranton who gave digital cameras to five US soldiers to film their one-year deployments in Iraq. Edited from 800 hours of film, it is a candid and instantaneous inside look at what it means to fight a war from a soldier's point of view.

''Blessed by Fire,'' in contrast, offers a view of war tempered by time, focusing on an Argentine veteran named Esteban looking back on the war 22 years after the event.

When his former foxhole mate Vargas attempts suicide, Esteban is forced to reexamine his memories in a film that director Tristan Bauer said had a strong message for the United States and Britain in the current conflict in Iraq.

''This story happened 24 years ago but still the world is at war,'' Bauer told Reuters, calling the Iraq war ''a crime.'' Another film about the impact of a war after soldiers return home won a special prize for a New York-made documentary film -- ''When I Came Home'' directed by Dan Lohaus about an Iraq war veteran who ends up homeless on the streets of New York.

Herold Noel, the veteran seen in the film, won a standing ovation from the crowd of film makers and actors at the awards ceremony as he thanked festival organizers for even choosing the film for the festival. ''I never thought they were going to accept it,'' he said. ''I thought nobody cares.'' Three other films set in or about Muslim countries took major awards, including ''The Yacoubian Building,'' billed as the most expensive film ever made in Egypt, whose director Marwan Hamed was chosen as best new narrative filmmaker.

''What we're facing is a great misunderstanding between East and West and I think dialogue will make us closer,'' Hamed told Reuters.

''The best means of dialogue is film and art.'' Pelin Esmer from Turkey was chosen as best new documentary filmmaker for ''The Play,'' a film about nine women in rural southern Turkey who put on a play about their lives. A special documentary prize was awarded to ''Voices of Bam'' about the Dec 2003 earthquake in Iran that killed more than 40,000 people.

The two main acting awards went to the protagonists of two European films -- Juergen Vogel for his role in the German film ''The Free Will'' and Eva Holubova for her role in ''Holiday Makers,'' a Czech film.

REUTERS SY RK0940