Jury statement
This documentary touched our spirits. In this world, there are people who live totally different lives to ours, and the filmmakers provided us with a gorgeous character study of a friendship between a woman and her seagull friend. The filmmaking is well paced, sensitive and shows the beauty of this friendship rather than making it seem odd or uncouth. We loved that the director kept us guessing about who Bjørg was going to meet for a good amount of time before revealing JJ’s identity. If more films could celebrate the great diversity of human characters and shine a light on the love for nature and animals, then the world would be that much brighter. For this reason, we wanted to give Lovebirds and honourable mention at this year’s awards.