VANCOUVER — The Vancouver International Film Festival awarded Chinese filmmaker Emily Tang’s Perfect Life with the prestigious Dragons & Tigers Award for Young Cinema, which comes with a $10,000 prize.

The film, which had its North American premiere at VIFF, cross-cuts between the stories of two women whose paths cross in China’s southern boomtown of Shenzhen: a repressed 21-year-old woman from a broken home and a divorced mother of two fighting for alimony.

The juried Dragons & Tigers award has been given out for the past 15 years to a new director from the Asia-Pacific region for a creative and innovative film. Perfect Life is Tang’s second feature. She previously directed Conjugation (2001), analyzing the situation following the Tiananmen Square protests.

In a media release Thursday, the jury said it chose Perfect Life ‘For the way it captures the harshness of Chinese reality through its fictional protagonist, and for the subtlety of its wonderfully free storytelling.’

The award jury was comprised of Tokyo FilmEx Festival artistic director Ichiyama Shozo, San Francisco International Film Festival programmer Elisabeth Lequeret, and Thai director Pen-ek Ratanaruang (Ploy). The jury also gave a special mention to German + Rain from Japan’s Yokohama Satoko and Sweet Food City by Chinese filmmaker Gao Wendong.

In other VIFF news, screenings at the Empire Granville 7 Cinemas were nearly cancelled yesterday — and potentially for the remaining festival run through to Oct. 10 — due to extreme noise caused by street construction work.

Festival director Alan Franey says VIFF had received assurances from street engineers prior to its start that the repair work would be shut down during the festival. However, since last Friday, festival-goers in line for tickets outside the Granville Street theater have dealt with the annoyance of construction noise. Thursday, jackhammers and other heavy equipment were moved onto the street, and the increased noise would have disrupted movie presentations inside the theaters.

Unable to get an answer as to what city government department or company was responsible for the repair work, the frustrated festival staff quickly sent out a media release noting their concerns. It was then identified that BC Hydro was in charge of the latest construction, and they agreed to shut down until the festival ends.

‘It would have killed us,’ says Franey. ‘We would have been forced to cancel screenings and start giving out refunds. Luckily, ringing the alarm bells worked.’