The Los Angeles Film Festival concluded with the announcement of this year’s winners including winners in the LA Muse, Documentary, and Narrative categories who each received $5,000 while the Short Film awards winners earned $1,500. The Narrative Award winner was also announced, with Dave Boyle’s Man From Reno being named the “finest narrative film in competition” at this year’s festival.
“This year the Los Angeles Film Festival reached a new high, thanks to the audiences who packed theaters in support of the films. We’re so proud of every single film and celebrate the winners!” said Festival Director Stephanie Allain.
“Huge thanks to our wonderful juries, whose enthusiasm and diligence was remarkable. There were so many outstanding movies in the competition this year, which made the jurors’ job difficult. Congratulations to the winners–and to all the filmmakers who helped make the Festival a rousing success,” said Artistic Director David Ansen.
2014 LAFF Winners:
Narrative Award (for Best Narrative Feature)
Winner: Man From Reno, directed by Dave Boyle
Producer: Ko Mori
Cast: Ayako Fujitani, Pepe Serna, Kazuki Kitamura
Film Description: A stranger in the increasingly strange city of San Francisco, Japanese crime novelist Aki is unsure of precisely what role she has to play in a real-life murder mystery involving ambiguous MacGuffins and amorphous identities. Unfolding in lonely places such as bookshops and hotel bars, Dave Boyle’s moody thriller uncovers exhilarating new takes on genre conventions. Consequently, it’s an alluring homme fatal who supplies Aki with the breadcrumb trail of clues that entices her into a labyrinthine plot of sinister dealings. In turn, the aging sheriff (veteran character actor Pepe Serna, fantastic in a rare leading role), who should rightfully be riding to her rescue, proves to be equally out of his depth. The game is afoot, the chase is exhilarating and the stakes are perilously high in this inspired neo-noir.
Documentary Award (for Best Documentary Feature)
Winner: Stray Dog, directed by Debra Granik
Producer: Anne Rosellini
Featuring: Ron ‘Stray Dog’ Hall, Alicia Soriano Hall, Felipe Angel Padilla Soriano, Felipe de Jesús Padilla Soriano
Film Description: Winter’s Bone director Debra Granik’s searching, stereotype-shattering documentary focuses on Ron “Stray Dog” Hall. At first glance, this burly, bearded biker looks like one badass dude. Then, through Granik’s incisive, sympathetic eye, we begin to see his big, battle-scarred heart. The movie follows Stray Dog as he caravans on his Harley from his rural Missouri home to Washington, D.C. with his fellow vets to pay tribute to his fallen brothers at the Vietnam Memorial. Back home, he takes in his Mexican wife and her two sons, who are, like him, struggling to find a place in a country that has become foreign. Stray Dog is at once a powerful look at the veteran experience, a surprising love story and a fresh exploration of what it takes to survive in the hardscrabble heartland of America.
Documentary Award
Honorable Mention: Walking Under Water, directed by Eliza Kubarska
Producer: Monika Braid
Film Description: In the crystal clear waters off the coast of Borneo, a unique way of life threatens to disappear forever. For generations, the Badjao were oceanic nomads, living in harmony with the sea as fishermen and free divers. Nowadays, however, only a few Badjao remain, like Alexan, who still remembers the old ways. He hopes to pass his knowledge along to his ten-year-old nephew Sari, but time and opportunities are running out. Sari loves the sea, but it can only offer a hard life of subsistence fishing, while the nearby tourist resort sings a siren song of easy money. Through the sensitive direction of Eliza Kubarska and remarkable underwater cinematography, Walking Under Water provides a haunting portrait of timeless traditions struggling to survive in the modern world.
LA Muse Award
Winner: Los Ángeles by Damian John Harper
Producers: Jonas Weydemann, Jakob D. Weydemann
Cast: Mateo Bautísta Matías, Marcos Rodriguez Ruíz, Lidia García, Daniel Bautista, Donaciano Bautista Matías
Film Description:The perilous ambitions for a better life weigh heavy on the youth of a Zapotec community in rural Oaxaca. Young Mateo plans to raise money for the coyote who will smuggle him across the border and ingratiates himself with the local gang, seeking protection on the other side. Yet when his conscience catches up with him, not even the fearless mothers of their agrarian village can protect him. Forced to gather his courage and embark on a suicidal journey, Mateo’s goal becomes less a physical destination and more a dangerous rite of passage. Damian John Harper’s directorial debut subverts the conventions of the gang genre and transcends the ethnographic approach by knitting together the multiple perspectives of his diverse characters, who are magnetically played by non-actors.
Best Performance in the Narrative Competition
Winner: The Ensemble Cast of Recommended by Enrique, directed by Rania Attieh and Daniel García
Producers: Rania Attieh, Daniel García, Ivan Eibuszyc, Mahalia Cohen, Alice Kharoubi
Cast: Lino Vareia, Sarah Swinwood
Film Description: An aspiring Hollywood actress working on her first feature–a no-budget horror flick oddly crewed by enthusiastic teenagers–and a cowboy on a mysterious job arrive in the small border town of Del Rio, Texas, each with their own very clear agenda. When the starlet’s film director and the cowboy’s associate both fail to appear, however, there’s nothing to do but wait and see. Dusty Del Rio quickly becomes a strange way station where time seems to stand still and things are not what they seem. Basing their film on an amusing, bizarre true story they delight in elaborating on, filmmakers Rania Attieh and Daniel Garcia and their brilliant cast of newcomers weave a mesmerizing, witty fable that blurs the borders between dreams and reality.
Audience Award for Best Narrative Feature
Winner: The Young Kieslowski, directed by Kerem Sanga
Producers: Seth Caplan, Danny Leiner, Dave Hunter, Ross Putman
Cast: Ryan Malgarini, Haley Lu Richardson, Joshua Malina, Melora Walters, James LeGros, Osric Chau, Jessica Lu, John Redlinger
Film Description: Grand romantic gestures need not apply in this comedic tale of star-crossed young love. Instead, freshman Brian Kieslowski displays endless reserves of bumbling awkwardness as he goes home with a girl for the first time… and then learns that he got her pregnant… with twins… all while she’s going through a rather inconvenient Christianity phase. Could it be that being the good guy and doing what’s right are two very different things? With writer/director Kerem Sanga presenting a seriocomic gauntlet for them to negotiate, Ryan Malgarini and Haley Lu Richardson deliver delightfully nimble performances, hitting all the right off-notes as two kids in just over their heads, whose luck seems as bad as their instincts. The fates may have conspired to prematurely drag them into adulthood, but they intend on going kicking and screaming.
Audience Award for Best Documentary Feature
Winner: Meet the Patels, directed by Geeta V. Patel and Ravi V. Patel
Producers: Janet Eckholm, Geeta V. Patel
Featuring: Ravi V. Patel, Vasant K. Patel, Champa V. Patel
Film Description: Largely inexperienced in the art of courtship, L.A.-based actor Ravi Patel is suddenly thrown into the deep end of the dating pool when he reluctantly consents to letting his parents find him an ideal Indian bride. As he embarks on a multi-date tour across North America, however, the self-effacing suitor can’t help but wonder whether his quest represents a laudable acceptance of cherished traditions or a pathetic surrender to his own deep-seated insecurities. Co-directed by Ravi and his sister Geeta, this sharp, funny documentary is fueled by the comic banter and confessional asides that can transpire only between siblings. Meanwhile, their doting parents are the sort of larger-than-life characters that most Hollywood screenwriters can only dream of creating. If only all family videos were this enthralling and packed with plot twists.
Audience Award for Best International Feature
Winner: Someone You Love, directed by Pernille Fischer Christensen
Country: Denmark
Producers: Vinca Wiedemann, Sisse Graum Jørgensen
Cast: Mikael Persbrandt, Trine Dyrholm, Birgitte Hjort Sørensen, Sofus Rønnov, Eve Best
Film Description: After many years living in L.A., a world-famous, hard-living Danish singer-songwriter (think a Nordic Leonard Cohen) returns to his homeland to record a new album. Solitary, self-absorbed and nursing his hard-won sobriety, he holes up in a luxurious country home and buries himself in his music, his only passion in life. His solitude is rudely interrupted by the arrival of his troubled, coke-snorting daughter, who deposits her 11-year-old son in his lap. Mikael Persbrandt is extraordinary as the gravel-voiced egotist forced to rediscover his deeply buried humanity in award-winning Danish director Pernille Fischer Christensen’s moving, immaculately crafted family drama.
Award for Best Narrative Short Film
Winner: The Runaway, directed by Jean-Bernard Marlin
Producer: Valentine de Bligniéres
Cast: Adel Bencherif, Médina Yalaoui
Description: A youth worker tries desperately to save an unstable teenage girl charged with multiple crimes.
Award for Best Documentary Short Film
Winner: The Queen, directed by Manuel Abramovich
Producer: Daniela Raschcovsky
Description: A young beauty queen endures the pain of getting a massive headdress attached to her head.
Award for Best Animated/Experimental Short Film
Winner: Butter Lamp, directed by Hu Wei
Producer: Julien Féret
Cast: Genden Punstock
Description: Cultures clash as traditional Tibetan families pose in front of backdrops of far away locales.
Audience Award for Best Short Film
Winner: The Gunfighter, directed by Eric Kissack
Producer: Sarah Platt
Cast: Nick Offerman, Shawn Parsons, Scottt Beehner, Eileen O’Connell, Jordan Black
Film Description: Characters in a Western discover each others’ secrets from an evil off-screen narrator.
Audience Award for Best Music Video
Winner: “Turn Down For What: Lil Jon and DJ Snake” directed by Daniels
Music: Lil Jon & DJ Snake
This award is given to the music video audiences liked most as voted on by a tabulated rating system.
Source: Film Independent
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