On Saturday evening, 6 February, the audience awards were announced in the Grand Auditorium of the Doelen in Rotterdam. The IFFR 2010 Audience Award of € 7,500 went to the Spanish film Yo, también by Álvaro Pastor & Antonio Naharro. The Dioraphte Award for Hubert Bals Fund film held in highest regard went to the film Soul Boy by the Kenyan film maker Hawa Essuman, produced by Tom Tykwer.
Yo, también was most highly regarded by festival audiences, beating at the last minute Swiss documentary Die Frau mit dem 5 Elephanten (The Woman with the 5 Elephants) by Vadim Jendreyko and Golden Lion-winner Lebanon by Samuel Maoz. Yo, también, in which a graduate with Down's syndrome falls in love with a colleague, is one of the most surprising films of the last year with two spectacularly good protagonists. Other festival favourites were topical documentary Russian Lessons by Olga Konskaya & Andrei Nekrasov, Canadian talent Jacob Tierney’s The Trotsky, Francis Ford Coppola’s Tetro and VPRO Tiger Award winner Alamar by Pedro Gonzalez-Rubio.
Soul Boy by Hawa Essuman was given the Dioraphte Award (€10,000) by the festival audience for the most highly regarded film made with a contribution from the Hubert Bals Fund. Soul Boy follows Abila (14) who lives in one of the most miserable slums in Africa. His girlfriend Shiku belongs to a different tribe, as the result of which he is not really allowed to fraternize with her. And then one drunken night his father gambled away his own soul. With support from Tom Tykwer, the Kenyan film maker Hawa Essuman turned it into a sparkling film.