By Liz Lopez
The Bentonville Film Festival announced the jury prize winners for their seventh annual Festival. The week-long Festival, led by Academy Award-winning actor and Festival Chair Geena Davis, is known for its dedication to championing female, non-binary, LGBTQIA+, BIPOC, and people with disabilities’ voices in entertainment with films directed by 71% Women, 75% BIPOC/API and 33% LGBTQIA+ Filmmakers.
During the festival, I viewed the four jury award winners, as well as one of the Honorary Mention winners, Waikiki in the Narrative Feature category. All five of the films I viewed are worthy of the recognition they received during the festival and hopefully they will be seen by other festival audiences and/or have a theatrical/streaming release for the public in the near future. It was a great film festival to be a part of and so glad for the opportunity to view films from diverse voices and communities. It is one that I do hope to attend in the future.
The full list of 2021 Bentonville Film Festival award winners and honorees are below:
Jury Award Winners:
Narrative Film Award: 7 DAYS, Director: Roshan Sethi
Documentary Film Award: KILI BIG, Director: Ida Joglar
Short Film Narrative Award: AMERICANIZED, Director: Erica Eng
Episodic Award: NOW WITH FIONA, Director: Fiona Dawson
Special Recognition Awards:
Honorary Mention, Narrative Feature: WAIKIKI, Director: Christopher Kahunahana
Honorary Mention, Documentary Feature: YOUTH V GOV, Director: Christi Cooper
Honorary Mention, Short Film: NAHJUM, Director: Sebastian Torres Greene
The 2021 BFF Jury included six experts across three categories: Narrative judges included Founder & CEO of Marginal Mediaworks, Sanjay Sharma, and Executive Director of CAPE, Michelle Sugihara; Documentary judges included Head of Film at Marginal MediaWorks Milan Chakraborty, and Head of Whistle Studios, Melanie Johnson; Episodic and Short judges included EVP of Digital and Social at 4 Media, Tom Hoehn, and Attorney at ASManagement, Alexander Shekarchian.
BFF is presented by BFFoundation in partnership with founding sponsor Walmart and presenting sponsor Coca-Cola. For more information, visit bentonvillefilm.org
Source: Bentonville Film Festival