The World According To Ion B. wins Best Documentary Award at Dokufest

The World According to Ion B., a documentary telling the story of Romanian homeless collage artist Ion Barladeanu, has won Best Balkan Documentary Award at Dokufest International Festival, in Kosovo, on August 7.

The documentary, directed by Romanian director Alexander Nanau and produced by HBO Romania and Alexander Nanau Production, follows the life of Ion Barladeanu, initially an anonymous homeless man, who is later to become an internationally-acclaimed pop-art celebrity. What’s more fascinating about Barladeanu is that he became a collage artist in communist Romania, while living on the streets and not knowing of the proportion that pop-art had taken internationally.

The Dokufest jury, part of which were Emel Celebi (Turkey), Mike Palmieri (USA) and Sissi Korhonen (Finland) declared about the Romanian documentary’s award receival: “The jury awards the grand prize to a director whose ability to execute a documentary perfectly combines with the character he illustrates and who does not miss an occasion to tell his story. It is a profoundly intimate portrait, made with a delicacy and humour that have unanimously gained our appreciation”.

Recently, Marc Lober, head of HBO Central Europe programme division, has ranked The World According to Ion B as the best documentary produced by the television channel in the region, within the last year. The World According to Ion B. was written, produced and filmed by Alexander Nanau.

In the picture, the very much publicized meeting between Ion Barladeanu and Angelina Jolie, that took place in Paris, on February 25, at the artist’s Realpolitik exhibit