Oscar-Qualifying HollyShorts Film Festival Hands Out Awards; ‘We Were Meant To’ Claims $60K Prize
21.08.2023 - 23:47
/ deadline.com
The 19th HollyShorts Film Festival has handed out its awards, including the Grand Prix Best Short Award to We Were Meant To, an honor that comes with a $60,000 prize from Panavision.
Tari Wariebi directed We Were Meant To, set in a reality where “Black men have wings and their first flight is a rite of passage.” The film stars Tim Johnson Jr. The Grand Prix Award qualifies the short for Oscar consideration. Also qualifying for the Oscars are Misan Harriman’s The After, which won Best Live Action Short, Rita Basulto’s Humo (Smoke), winner of the Best Animation Award, and Elisa Gambino’s Every Day After, winner of Best Documentary Short.
The After stars David Oyelowo and Jessica Plummer. Animated winner Humo, meanwhile, “follows a boy called Daniel, who travels to a dark destination known as the smokehouse.”
Every Day After tells the short of Jary, a Philippine boy born with a cleft palate. His mother and father rejected him at birth because of his facial difference, but his older sister Jessa stepped in to take a caring and parental role in his life. The film follows Jary as he undergoes his first surgery to repair his palate, an operation facilitated by the nonprofit Smile Train. Gambino directed the film, while her husband Neal Broffman shot it (in lustrous black & white). Elaine Jose Bobadilla produced, while Dave A. Liu served as executive producer. Every Day After held its world premiere at HollyShorts.
The HollyShorts awards ceremony was moved up a day to Saturday to avoid the onslaught of Hurricane Hilary. The festival handed out additional awards in the categories below:
Best Genre Category Presented by Hot Pot Productions – Tim Webber’s FLITE
Best Horror – Nuhash Humayun’s FOREIGNERS ONLY
Best International –