SHORT FILMS, BIG STORIES Jury and Audience Awards Announced
The jury awards the top prize to the short film BEAUTIFUL by Mulan Fu for its delicate craftsmanship and effective storytelling, which delves into the emotional complexity of mother-daughter relationships, health, beauty, and growing up. This filmmaker showed admirable skill in multiple roles; from the animated performances, to the music and cinematography, the jury found the film's sweet yet assured simplicity incredibly
poignant and gorgeously rendered.
The jury would also like to recognize two films with Honorable Mentions:
THE MERMAID'S JOURNEY
by Alexandra Torterotot
For its beautiful construction of mood and characters.
MUSCLE MEMORY
by Saladin White II
For its fine craftsmanship that layers multiple narratives, weaving a powerful
cinematic journey into personal struggle.
JURY MEMBERS
Farihah Zaman is a queer Bangladeshi-American filmmaker, critic, and curator. Her first feature was the award-winning documentary REMOTE AREA MEDICAL, followed by THIS TIME NEXT YEAR (premiered 2014 Tribeca Film Festival) and the doc-fiction hybrid FEAST OF THE EPIPHANY (premiered BAMcinemafest 2018), as well as several shorts (KOMBIT, NOBODY LOVES ME, AMERICAN CARNAGE, and TO BE QUEEN, which is part of the Emmy-nominated New York Times Op-Doc series FROM HERE TO HOME). She produced the Sundance-award winning Netflix Original, GHOSTS OF SUGAR LAND, which was shortlisted for 2020 Academy Award nomination. Zaman has written for Reverse Shot, Film Comment, Elle, Huffington Post, Filmmaker Magazine, and AV Club, among others, and her diverse background in the film industry includes roles at independent distributor Magnolia Pictures, IFP, The Flaherty Seminar, and serving as the Production Manager for Field of Vision (founded by Laura Poitras and Charlotte Cook), where she worked with artists like Marshall Curry, Garrett Bradley, Lyric Cabral, Josh Begley, and Ramell Ross on films eventually published at The Atlantic, The New Yorker, Buzzfeed, Vice, Wired and more. She was the Documentarian in Residence at Bard College 2018-2019, has been named a Top 40 under 40 filmmaker by Doc NYC and Topic Studios, and is a member of the documentary branch of the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences.
Award-winning Mexican director Rodrigo Reyes has received the support of The Mexican Film Institute (IMCINE), Sundance and Tribeca Institutes, and many others. His films have been on America ReFramed and Netflix, and he is a recipient of the prestigious Guggenheim and Creative Capital Awards as well as the SF Indie Fest Non-Fiction Vanguard Award. In 2020, his latest film entitled 499, won Best Cinematography at Tribeca Film Festival, as well as the Special Jury Award at Hot Docs.
Iyabo Boyd is a writer, director, and producer that strives to tell stories from under-explored perspectives, and to reflect the dynamic humanity of women and people of color. Her short ME TIME, a black feminist comedy about self care and masturbation, played over 20 festivals including Blackstar, Rooftop Films, and Miami Shorts Fest, and won 9 awards including Best Director at the Atlanta Comedy Film Festival. Her feature screenplay, KAYLA & EDDIE EN FRANÇAIS, a collaboration with her dad, is about an estranged Black father and daughter reconnecting in Paris. For this project, Iyabo was a fellow in the Sundance Film Festival’s Talent Forum, the Sundance Film Institute’s Screenwriting Intensive, IFP’s No Borders Project Forum, and was awarded a SFFILM Rainin Screenwriting Grant. Iyabo is also the founder of Brown Girls Doc Mafia, a collective for women filmmakers of color, which has 4,000 members globally. Iyabo was a Ford Foundation JustFilms Fellow, and is a recipient of DocNYC’s New Leader award. She graduated from NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts for film, and currently resides in the Bronx, NY.
Audience Award
You voted and we listened! The SHORT FILMS, BIG STORIES Audience Award goes to MUSCLE MEMORY by Saladin White II. MUSCLE MEMORY is a conceptual nonlinear short film that follows Tariq, who makes his living as a hoofer like his late father Yayha. On the anniversary of Yahya's death, he dedicates a dance to him, which triggers childhood memories.