PHOTO VIA FLORIDA FILM FESTIVAL
The Florida Film Festival (Website) closed out its 35th anniversary edition at the Enzian Theater in Maitland with a ceremony announcing filmmaker award winners, and for the first time in festival history, two films each swept both jury and audience awards in their categories.
William Means’ Junkie took both the Grand Jury Prize and Audience Award for Best Narrative Feature. Sharon Liese’s Seized, the Sundance documentary about the 2023 police raid on the Marion County Record, won the Grand Jury Prize for Best Documentary Feature, while Patrick Bresnan’s First They Came For My College took the Audience Award. Michael Borrelli’s The Last Day of Byron Bray was the short film double winner, claiming both the Grand Jury Prize and Audience Award for Best Short Film.
Additional jury awards went to Brian Gersten’s Hollywood’s Mermaid: The Esther Williams Story (Best Documentary Short) and Andy and Carolyn London’s 1981 (Best Animated Short). Special Jury Awards recognized Tatti Ribeiro’s Valentina for “resolute feature filmmaking,” Blake Winston Rice’s Disc for “surprising intimacy,” and Madeline Engle and Joe Purtell’s Trapped for “innovation in non-fiction storytelling.”
Audience awards for Florida Feature and Florida Short went to Costa Karalis’ Frogtown and Justin Whittingham’s Welcome, respectively, the latter a documentary short about Orlando’s first African American Poet Laureate, Shawn Welcome, who made a special appearance at the festival.
The 35th edition opened with Adam Carter Rehmeier’s Caroline, Caroline, and closed with a 75th anniversary screening of Alfred Hitchcock’s Strangers on a Train. Paul Giamatti and Judge Reinhold headlined the festival’s “An Evening With…” events, with both drawing packed houses and crowds outside the Enzian for selfies. The festival also screened anticipated new work from Steven Soderbergh, Gregg Araki, Ben Wheatley, and Maude Apatow, and recorded record-breaking audience numbers overall.
“These award winners are wonderful representatives of the amazing films we screened and filmmakers we hosted throughout the fest,” said Florida Film Festival Executive Director Wade Neal, who was marking his first year leading the festival.
The Orlando Shine was a proud media sponsor of this year’s festival.
