WINNERS

MONTH OF NOVEMBER

Until the end of time

His father perished in a car accident a year ago, and his mother was left in a coma. On the first anniversary of his father's death, a son pushes his wheelchair-bound mother to his father's tombstone, where he runs into Dr. Li Min, a seasoned specialist who treated his parents and eventually sent his father away. Dr. Li Min unties the knot in his heart and reveals to his son the true cause of his father's death.

Best Film (under40 min) - Directed by Wang Wang

What Rhymes With Reason

Tragedy ignites a group of teens on a quest to find a legendary landmark hidden in the wilderness. Together, they navigate the quest while confronting the darkness within themselves.

Best Producer (Over 40min) - Kim Dawson, Jacob Snovel & Nathan Gardocki
Best Lead - Gattlin Griffith
Best Director - Kyle Roberts

The Imposters

Maya has just split from her long-term girlfriend and meets the enigmatic Hattie. Together they travel to Hattie's house, and Maya is impressed with Hattie's success and attitude towards life. They fall for each other, but soon, things begin to unravel as Maya realizes that Hattie is perhaps not who she says she is, and everything is not as it seems.

Best LGBTQ+ Film (over 40 min) - Directed by Nicholas Winter

From Life to Life

The story is set in 1990s Georgia, after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Luka is a surgical doctor, who saves lives, but struggles to adapt to the ruthless and corrupt new system and by all available means tries to stay loyal to his profession. However, eventually he has to make a choice between his family and lives of others, which leads to irreversible consequences.

Best Film (Over 40 min) - Directed By Beka Sikharulidze

Revenge of The Pumpkins

An average pumpkin farmer, Joe, finds himself in an unfortunate situation after he chops and guts his pumpkins for festivities.

Best Animated Film (Under 40 min) Directed by Sena Yacteen

The Untouchable

The police arrives to control a scene made by a young girl . . .

Best Cinematography(Under 40min ) - Salar Ardestani

Monday Mourning

"Monday Mourning" delves into the enigmatic journey of Daniel, a man returning home after a long absence under mysterious circumstances. The story begins with a sense of intrigue, as Daniel prepares for a significant day, the nature of which is unknown. This deliberate ambiguity creates a compelling tapestry of unspoken emotions and complex family dynamics.

Throughout the film, the narrative invites exploration into the puzzle of Daniel's life. His interactions with his sister are laden with tension, nostalgia, and unspoken truths. The film captures the essence of a family reuniting, leaving viewers to ponder the reasons behind Daniel's prolonged absence and the nature of the gathering that has brought them together.

"Monday Mourning" is an exploration of emotional landscapes that define human relationships. It challenges viewers to reflect on themes of homecoming, reconciliation, and the unsaid words that linger in family relationships. The film is a poignant reminder of the complexities of coming to terms with one's past and the power of presence in the face of undefined loss. Engaging and thought-provoking, "Monday Mourning" is a cinematic experience, highlighting the delicate balance between what is said and what is left to the imagination.

Best Director (Under 40min) - Dustin Kahia

Best Lead (Male) - Dominic Bogart

Never Alone

Consumed by the grief of his wife's death, James rejects friend's attempts at company, only to find that when his friends leave, he isn't truly alone.

Best Producer (Under 40min) - Christian Gerring

Metropolis

Discover the hidden wonders of Reef City in "Metropolis," a mesmerizing short film by Luca Keller that takes you into the heart of a coral reef's daily life, showcasing intimate and illuminating wildlife scenes.

From the morning rituals of the Emperor Angelfish to the nocturnal hunts of the Wunderpus, witness and learn about the intricate balance of marine life.
"Metropolis" is a vivid reminder of our role in preserving this underwater world, a captivating journey into the depths of the ocean's most vibrant ecosystem.

Best Short Film on Nature & Wildlife (Under 40 min) - Directed By Luca Keller

Markings of Murder

Donald Brubaker Jr, a habitual sleepwalker and son of a famed serial killer, suspects himself of committing murders at night in his neighborhood without his knowledge.

As an eulogist for the Evergreen Journal his job is to write obituaries for his potential victims and the body count continues to rise as time goes on. He begins to try and take per-cautions at night but can’t seem to fight off the feeling that he is out of control. Vivid nightmares of brutal killings haunt his dreams and prevent Donald from ever feeling rested. The line between dream and reality becomes even more blurry.

A strained relationship with his wife, a son who is curious about his murderer grandfather and occasional daytime blackouts compound his situation as Donald tries to unravel mess that is his mind. Although he publicly claims innocence, all the signs seem to point to a dark secret in his family.

Best Screenplay(over 40min) - Jarvis G & Brandon Rhiness

Shafted

Joel and Rafi are in what seems to be a standard romantic comedy. What do you do when you find yourself alone in an elevator with your gym crush? For Joel, with his floor fast approaching, he throws caution to the wind and asks the guy out. Rafi pauses a second too long, Joel is desperate to escape, and the elevator comes to a sudden halt – they are stuck! They awkwardly begin getting to know each other, thanks to Joel’s “contingency plan for this sort of thing,” wine. The connection between the two of them grows and as it reaches its hopeful climax, the fourth wall doesn’t break – it shatters completely. Mat, the filmmaker, playing “Joel,” steps out of the elevator fantasy set and into the harsh reality of his own wish fulfillment. Is he foolish for making this film to tell a story he’s not sure he believes in?

Best LGBTQ+ Film (Under 40min) Directed by Emerson Collins, Del Shores

Black Sugar Red Blood

Anna... She doesn't know if that's her real name. Because apart from the vague memory of the sound of this name, she only associates one thing with her early childhood: horrible fear. Of doctors, of injections and the bitter-sweet taste of a piece of sugar on liberation day. Anna Strishkowa is a toddler when she stands on the ramp of Auschwitz on 4 December 1943. She neither knows the names of her parents nor where she was born.
For Luigi Toscano, Anna Strishkowa is the first Auschwitz survivor he portrays for the exhibition of his project "Against Forgetting" in Kyiv. He has photographed more than 500 other survivors since then, but Anna's fate never lets him go. Luigi wants to help Anna decipher her identity.
But shortly before filming begins, Putin invades Ukraine. The bombs falling on Kiev catapult Anna back to the horror of her childhood. Luigi offers to bring her from Kyiv to Mannheim. But Anna refuses. Hitler robbed her of her identity, and she doesn't want to let Putin take her home away from her. There is confirmation of Anna's prisoner tattoo, that she was registered in Auschwitz. But further research came to nothing. The adoptive father had the tattoo removed shortly before Anna started school. To protect her, Anna believes.
A Soviet propaganda film showing Anna shortly after liberation raises doubts about the previously assumed prisoner number. Against all expectations, Luigi discovers the decisive clue in a yellowed medical file in the Auschwitz archive.
The new clues point to relatives who are still alive. They lead from Auschwitz to Belarus, from the Potulice-Lebrechtsdorf camp to Kyiv and Drohobytsch, all the way to Unna in North Rhine-Westphalia.

Anna's search links the darkest chapter of the twentieth century with our own history: How much do we need to understand the past in order to understand our present?

Special Jury Award - Luigi Toscano

Final Broadcast

A foreign army is invading Australia.

Within hours the Australian Government is either dead or in disarray, with only a skeleton staff able to retreat to the dark hallways of a disused military hospital. Defeat is imminent. Surrender seemingly the only option. There, Megan Crandle, the Prime Minister’s Chief of Staff, oversees the preparation of his final broadcast to the nation.

The Prime Minister’s communications officer Paul Hegarty polishes the draft, attempting to explain the reasons for surrender. He is torn, thinking about his family that have stayed behind for him, while the ambitious Crandle browbeats him to stay on message, and to finish as soon as possible. In the half-darkness they argue syntax while bombs fall around them.

Into this powder keg enters a mysterious stranger Mr Norman Stand. In his late 60s, bound to a wheelchair, and apparently from the Department of Veterans Affairs, he is intent on changing the course of history.

The three soon find themselves in separate corners; to surrender, or to fight, or to appease to save life.

Death and mayhem follow. With seconds to spare, the Prime Minister is left facing the cameras, as well as facing an impossible choice.

Best Support(Male -under 40min) - Nick Annas
Best Original Score - Daniel Zines

From Our Side

1918 -1978, sixty years of Italian History flow, taking us from one darkness to another.

Best Producer(Under 40 min) - Simone Massi & Nie Wiem

Fallen

A modern love letter. Sam Ares, an overly spiritual vegetarian womanizer in New York is troubled by dreams he does not understand. He searches for his purpose and to put together the pieces of the puzzle he is being given. Kristina, an overly practical meat loving artist is haunted by visions and dreams of a man she does not know. They often share the same places at different times knowing the other is out there somewhere.

Best Emerging Filmmaker(Over 40min) - Alex Kruz

From The Same Tree

In the privacy of his studio, Colombian painter Santiago Cárdenas works with a prowess that only experience can render. He is the reference and mentor of a family composed by numerous artists who reside all over the world, and who have also devoted their lives to art. Their different visions about the creative process, the inspiration, discipline and practice of their craft, instilled in them since childhood, reveal the immense richness of their artistic concepts. Each of them works from their own truth, passion and specialty. What lies behind an artwork? And furthermore, what lies behind an artist? Just like the leaves of a tree, these creators share their artistry, generating in this way a thicket of postures, world visions and individual aesthetics. Generation after generation, each of these artists has been paving their own path, whereby a natural exchange, resulting from their familial bond, has also allowed them to collaborate artistically and jointly produce works of art.
Art is the root and the branch, the starting and arrival point of this family dedicated to the continuous exploration, creation and sharing of their work and their knowledge.

Best Screenplay (Over 40min - Documentary ) - Maria Alejandra Briganti & Claudia Fischer

Dark Highway

If you had any idea what was happening in the car beside you, the hotel room below you or in the high school parking lot in your neighbourhood, it would make you stop and think and cringe…

Dark Highway is a documentary about the invisible crime of human and sex trafficking happening every day in Ontario, Canada. The film is led by filmmaker, Anna Jane (AJ) Edmonds, a bystander, as she takes audiences along the 401 Highway to meet survivors of sex trafficking and their advocates and change makers. These personal conversations with AJ detail the luring, grooming, hunting, torturing and exploiting of vulnerable people, and most notably children, in our communities.

Throughout the film, audiences will be taken across the 401 corridor to cities, towns and neighbourhoods, including ones deemed ‘safe,’ where this egregious crime permeates the lives of unsuspecting parents, teachers, friends and care givers. This film discusses the approaches traffickers take to lure victims into the crime, the technology used and the social media tactics that trap victims into being exploited. It explores the horrors that victims face while at the hands of their traffickers and the barriers that are holding survivors hostage in a dysfunctional judicial process and support system.

Best Documentary Film (over 40min) -Directed by AnnaJane Edmonds

Assassination Orders from Belgrad

Assassination Orders from Belgrade – Croatian Exiles and
Yugoslav State Terrorism is a 2021 German documentary film
produced by TORCIDA Films. This documentary film deals with
what is probably the longest unsolved series of murders on
German soil and the bloody chapter of German-Yugoslav history
that is hardly known to the German public.
The communist secret service of Yugoslavia killed at least 78
Croatian exiles worldwide. The youngest victims were just
three and nine years old. Most murders were committed in the
Federal Republic of Germany. However, it was not until 2005
that the Munich judicial authorities began to consistently
investigate these murders and punish the perpetrators.
The viewers follow children, relatives and friends of the Udba
victims as well as survivors of the Udba assassinations who
report on their dramatic and painful experiences and get to
know the political and historical background of their
destinies. The story of Yugoslav state terrorism is told for
the first time from the victims' point of view.

Honorable Mention - Dragan Cotic

Stranger

his documentary has been banned in China because it addresses sensitive issues such as religion and terrorism, and some critics believe the reason is that the documentary depicts some parallels between the two ideologies of terrorism and totalitarianism, although this was not our starting point or intention. When we made the video, ISIS had already been defeated, but we anticipated that this philosophy would remain strong and spread, and the inhumanity in the Middle East bears this out. We believe that, in an era of deep-rooted hatred, historical entanglements, and geopolitical complications, only by facing, exposing, and thoroughly debating and discussing terrorism without self-imposed constraints will we be able to effectively defeat it.

It all started on August 17, 2017, when a terrorist attack took place on the Ramblas, Spain's busiest and most crowded pedestrian street, killing 13 people and injuring hundreds more. Chai Jing, a famous former Chinese anchorwoman, lost contact with her husband, and he was on the Ramblas. In those terrifying moments, she and her 3-year-old daughter experienced great fear of losing him forever. She later learned that one of the victims, little Xavi, was the same age as her daughter, and his father never got over the grief and could never understand why this attack happened.

The attackers were second-generation immigrants, born and raised on European soil, wealthy, employed, and well-educated. Traditional theories of poverty, unemployment, discrimination, and identity politics could not explain the radicalization and the suicidal attack of these young people and their indiscriminate and brutal killing of civilians.

Special Jury Award - Cissie Fan

Vincent

Inspired by Tim Burton's Wednesday, Vincent is a character imagined in the world of the Addams Family, which explores the possibility of a new member entering the family.

Best Emerging Filmmaker(Under 40min) - Johnny Bazaldua

A Marriage in 5 Minutes

A husband and wife speedrun through the ups and downs of a marriage in a single 5 minute take. A follow up to the viral short film, A Relationship in 5 Minutes, which landed on the front page of Reddit and was featured in HuffPost and BuzzFeed, the film's actors, now 10 years older, improv their way through a number of marriage milestones, ranging from a wedding, to a honeymoon, to having a first child, to a health scare, and more.

Honorable Mention - Court Dunn

Medèn àgan

A woman and two men. It’s night time.
They cut the chain off the gate at the entrance of the theatre, they set the scene with the few objects they have brought with them, among which a camera.
They have the task of “celebrating” a tragic ritual.
The tragedy is Antigone by Sophocles: the conflict between human and divine laws, the condition of women, the arrogance of power, the incapacity of reconciling one’s own reasons with the reasons of another and mutual respect.
From here we have the title of the film: the ancient Greek saying “medèn àgan”, niente oltre misura, nothing beyond measure.
The “celebration” and the challenge consist in the fact that three human beings, alone before themselves, with no costumes, masks or any other aids, are sharing among themselves the roles of Sophocles’ work, including the chorus.
Cinema has the power of plumbing the origin of every rite in the best manner: self detachment, in order to submit to the energy of comprehension that every character bears within in the situation he has been put in by the author.
The rite of cinema, the rite of tragedy and the rite of theatre witness all processes of inner transformation in which every human being has his leading role to play and is actively responsible for, seeking the comprehension of a level of reality even more real than visible reality.

Special Jury Award - Alessandro Vantini