Celebrating Filmmakers at Socially Distance Award Night

The 9th Annual Grand Finale took place virtually February 22nd-27th via xerb.tv platform. Despite the pandemic and its myriad challenges we were able to partner with various streaming platforms to host our regular season events online and discuss the selected works with the filmmakers via Zoom. The finalists were carefully chosen by audience vote last year and our programming team and we invited the following judges to help choose the winners: Curtis John, Founder and Executive Director of The Luminal Theater, a nomadic microcinema that highlights the work of independent filmmakers from the Black/African diaspora. He is also co-founder/producer of The Caribbean Film Series which takes place at the Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM) in Brooklyn, where he also serves as a Programmer-at-Large; and Anamaria Marinca, lead actress from the Cannes Film festival Golden Palm-winning drama 4 MONTHS, 3 WEEKS AND 2 DAYS and Francis Ford Coppola’s YOUTH WITHOUT YOUTH. The award presentation took place at the HiO store in Tribeca on Saturday February 27th and we celebrated the finalists’ works with an intimate socially distance gathering with invited guests and presented the awards to some of the winning filmmakers listed below.

A big thanks to all our sponsors and supporters: JMR Rentals, UKW Media, CANON USA, Final Draft, Rhino Films, Screenblade, 3636 Studio, Meditative Writing, International Screenwriters’ Association, Backstage Magazine, Sketchfab, On The Scene Media and No Rest for the Weekend podcast.