New director awards went to Canada's Emanuel Hoss-Desmarais for his dark comedy, Whitewash about a man trying to survive a harsh Canadianwinter, and American Sean Dunne for Oxyana, set in a rural coal mining town riddled with an addiction to pain relief medication.
Gilles Langis, a senior forecaster with the Canadian Ice Service in Ottawa, says the Arctic winter has been so severe the ice has not only recovered, it is actually 10 to 20 cm thicker in many places than at this time last year.