Copyright Original Film AB 

10 min. - English subtitles

The winners of the first PRIX IRIS in Amsterdam were made public in the NetherlandS. This EUROPEAN MEDIA AWARD for equality and tolerance aims to award contributions to greater mutual understanding, thereby bridging the gap between cultures and societies.

The winner in the category TV Non-Fiction is: BLACK IS BEAUTIFUL? (Svart är vackert?), directors: Ulf Hultberg and Åsa Faringer, produced by Original Film AB.

The independent jury had to make a choice from over 130 entries from 25 European countries.

The jury motivated its choice of the Scandinavian co-production "Black is Beautiful?",  as follows:

“A multicultural district in Stockholm. Some would call it a ghetto. The district is called Rinkeby. The girl is named Margitu, a Swede born and bred in Rinkeby, but black.

‘Sometimes I feel like an Ethiopian, sometimes like a Russian. But a lot of the time I feel like a Swede.’ The documentary Black is Beautiful?  perhaps appears half fiction, owing to the intensive use of music and mood editing, but it is based on the diary of this young girl and told to us by the directors Ulf Hultberg and Åsa Faringer and is clearly non-fiction. We have seldom seen an anti-racist video statement, which is so universally moving. Television is emotion and Hultberg and Faringer understand that. They have earned with their approach the description renewing. It´s power lies in the way it brings the viewer into Margitu’s innocent childhood and makes real the menaces of racism. Because of its quality and potential effect on the viewers the jury decided to give this entry the first PRIX IRIS price for Non-Fiction programming in the year 1996.”