By Liz Lopez
The 2020 Film Competition Jury & Audience Award winners, alongside the Script Competition winners, were recently announced by the Austin Film Festival. Audience members cast their votes for the Audience Award after each screening as their Festival favorites among the slate offered this year.
The following Audience Award winners were selected by category:
Marquee Feature: Dave Not Coming Back, written and directed by Jonah Malak
Narrative Feature: Paper Tiger, written and directed by Paul Kowalski
Documentary Feature: The Book Keepers, written and directed by Phil Wall
Dark Matters Feature: Blinders, written by Tyler D. Savage and Dash Hawkins, directed by Tyler D. Savage [My film review is available in Spanish on this site under the tab “Events” and Mark’s review is available online as well.]
Comedy Vanguard Feature: Reboot Camp, written and directed by Ivo Raza
Texas Independent Feature: Horton Foote: The Road to Home, directed by Anne Rapp [My review is available in both English and Spanish on this site.]
Narrative Short: The Yellow Dress, written and directed by Alex Ko
Documentary Short: Little Rink, written and directed by Lisa Melmed
Animated Short: To: Gerard, written and directed by Taylor Meacham
Narrative Student Short: Molly Robber, written and directed by Austin Hall and Zach Visviks
Produced Digital Series Presented by Stage 13: Break In, created by Justin Gallaher and Samuel Roseme
In addition to the Audience Award-winning films, the following Film Jury Award winners were selected by category:
Narrative Feature: The Badger, written and directed by Kazem Mollaie
Documentary Feature: The Book Keepers, written and directed by Phil Wall
Comedy Vanguard Feature: Standard, written and directed by Fernando González Gómez [I viewed this film from Spain toward the end of the festival and the reviews will be posted for this very entertaining film. This filmmaker provided a very interesting and informative Q&A, stating he has an extensive list of shorts he has created and collaborated with many of his friends. This film is to be released in Spain in early December according to IMDb and hopefully it will have distribution in the United States too.]
Dark Matters Feature: The Blue Orchid, written by Carl Marott and Hans Frederik Jacobsen, directed by Carl Marott
Narrative Short: The Recordist, written by Indianna Bell, directed by Indianna Bell and Josiah Allen
Narrative Student Short: Home, written and directed by Adewale Olukayode
Documentary Short: Blood on our Side, written by Rodrigo Hernandez, Elpida Nikou and Gino Moreno, directed by Rodrigo Hernandez and Elpida Nikou
Animated Short: To The Dusty Sea, written and directed by Héloïse Ferlay
Produced Digital Series Presented by Stage 13: #martyisdead, created by Pavel Soukup
Enderby Entertainment Fellowship Award: 1,2,3, All Eyes On Me, written by Emil Gallardo and Derek Ho, directed by Emil Gallardo [I viewed this film and it is so moving as this one teacher and her class are featured as they prepare to escape from the gunmen who appear on their elementary school campus.
The 2020 Script Competition Winners were chosen from a record field of 13,175 scripts entered in the Screenplay, Digital Series, Playwriting, and Fiction Podcast Competitions. Finalists were reviewed by an industry panel of judges including Raamla Mohamed (writer Scandal, Little Fires Everywhere), Richard LaGravenese (writer The Fisher King, Freedom Writers, Water For Elephants), Trey Ellis (executive producer True Justice: Bryan Stevenson’s Fight For Equality; writer The Tuskegee Airmen, The Inkwell) James V. Hart (writer Hook, Bram Stoker’s Dracula), Eric Heisserer (writer Arrival, Birds Box), Ashley Miller (writer Thor, X-Men: First Class), Alvaro Rodriquez (co-creator/executive producer Seis Manos; writer/co-producer Last Rampage), Mark Protosevich (writer The Cell, I Am Legend, Oldboy), Chase Palmer (writer It; writer/director Naked Singularity), Oren Uziel (writer 22 Jump Street, The Cloverfield Paradox), and Brian Yorkey (showrunner 13 Reasons Why, playwright Next to Normal) among others).
For more complete information on each film, you can visit the Austin Film Festival website for details and read our reviews posted to date here on Trueviewreviews.com.
Source: The Austin Film Festival