On Body and Soul, directed by Ildikó Enyedi, beat 12 other films to win the prestigious 10th anniversary Sydney Film Prize at the 64th Sydney Film Festival.  Winner of the Berlinale Golden Bear, On Body and Soul is Enyedi’s visually ravishing return to filmmaking after an 18-year break. The film is about the unconventional romance between two coworkers who discover that each night they have exactly the same dreams.

Accepting the award, Enyedi said, “It was such an amazingly strong competition. It’s marvelous that such a film can move so many people, it gives me so much hope in cinema and in human communication.”

Sydney filmmakers Sascha Ettinger Epstein and Claire Haywood were awarded the Documentary Australia Foundation Award for Australian Documentary’s $10,000 cash prize for The Pink House, about the last brothel in old mining town Kalgoorlie.

The Dendy Awards for Australian Short Films saw the $7000 cash prize for the Dendy Live Action Short Award going to Adele, directed by Mirene Igwabi. Sunday Emerson Gullifer was Highly Commended for her short film Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow.

And Daniel Agdag’s animation Lost Property Office took out both the $7000 Rouben Mamoulian Award for Best Director and the $5000 Yoram Gross Animation Award.

The Event Cinemas Australian Short Screenplay Award, a $5,000 prize for the best short screenwriting, was awarded to Michael Cusack, the writer and director of stop motion animation After All.

And the writers of Screenability short film The Milky Pop Kid, Johanna Garvin and Emily Dash, were Highly Commended.

The $10,000 Sydney-UNESCO City of Film Award, bestowed by Create NSW to a trail-blazing NSW based screen practitioner, went to Indigenous Australian actor, director and writer Leah Purcell.