SCAD Savannah Film Festival Announces 2021 Competition Award Winners

SAVANNAH, GEORGIA — The Savannah College of Art and Design announces the award winners for the 24th annual SCAD Savannah Film Festival. A key stop on the festival circuit leading up to the Academy Awards, the SCAD Savannah Film Festival screened more than 150 films, including 45 narrative films, 15 documentary films, and 97 shorts, with 14 world premieres in 2021.

29 awards were announced from the 104 films chosen to compete in categories for narrative features, documentary features, professional shorts, animated shorts, documentary shorts, student shorts, Global Shorts Forum, and Shorts Spotlight.

Best Animated Short – The Mechanical Dancer, directed by Jenna Jaillet.

Best Documentary Feature – Medicine Man: The Stan Brock Story,directed by Paul Michael Angell.

Best Documentary Short – A Broken House, directed by Jimmy Goldblum.

Best Narrative Short – Feeling Through,directed by Doug Roland.

Best Narrative Feature – The Falconer,directed by Adam Sjöberg and Seanne Winslow.

Best Director – Adam Sjöberg and Seanne Winslow, The Falconer.

Best Editing – Uprooted: The Journey of Jazz Dance,directed by Khadifa Wong.

Jury Award for Excellence in Storytelling – Porcupine, directed by M. Cahill.

Jury Award for Best Performance – Jena Malone, Porcupine.

Jury Award for Global Impact – WOMB: Women of My Billion, directed by Ajitesh Sharma.

Jury Award for Artistic Excellence – Under the Skin, the Bark, directed by Franck Dion.

Best Narrative Short Directed by a SCAD Student – Ruby Days, directed by Noah Wong.

Best Student Short – Rubber Gun Club, directed by Alex Bendo.

Best Student Animation – A Tiny Tale,directed by Sylvain Civillier, Chloé Bourdic Théophile Coursimault, Noémie Halberstam, Maÿlis Mosny, and Zijing Ye.

Best Animation by a SCAD Student – The Ocean Duck,directed by Huda Razzak.

Student Shorts Jury Award for Artistic Excellence – Migrants, directed by Hugo Caby, Antoine Dupriez, Aubin Kubiak, Lucas Lermytte, and Zoé Devise.

Global Shorts Forum Best of Show – These Final Hours, directed by Lionel Coleman.

Best Global Short: Black Voices – These Final Hours, directed by Lionel Coleman.

Best Global Short: HERStory – Empiric, directed by Ioana Turcan.

Best Global Short: Tales from the Pandemic – The Beyond, directed by Daniel Maurer.

Best Narrative Short – Undercut, directed by Kelly Pike.

Global Impact Award – COVID-19 New Orleans, directed by Nilanjan Neil Lahiri and N. Shanmuga Sundaram.

Global Impact Award – Wide Open Dreams, directed by Paulina Jaskiewicz.

Global Shorts Forum Jury Award – Peek-A-Boom, directed by Maya Zankoul and Toni Yammine.

Shorts Spotlight Best of Show – Senior Prom, directed by Luisa Conlon.

Shorts Spotlight Best Short: Pride Parade – Taffeta,directed by Lovell Holder.

Shorts Spotlight Best Short: This American Life – The Night I Left America, directed by Laki Karavias.

Shorts Spotlight Best Short: Trigger Warnings – Growing Pains, directed by Ruthie Harrison.

Shorts Spotlight Jury Award for Excellence in Storytelling – Break Any Spell, directed by Anton Jøsef.

The 2021 festival’s professional jury members included actor and SCAD alum Kayli Carter, producer and director Annabel Jankel, BlackFilmandTV.com founder and editor Wilson Morales, CinemaBlend managing director Sean O’Connell, and actor and producer Molly C. Quinn.

Celebrating its 24th year, the SCAD Savannah Film Festival and competitions provide SCAD students with opportunities as unique as the selected films. This year, the festival received more than 1,500 submissions for the competition series. During the festival, students from every academic discipline connect with leaders from the entertainment industry through master classes, coffee talks, lectures, workshops, and panel discussions. Savannah, a premier film hub in the Southeast, promotes quality movies produced by independent and studio filmmakers.

View the festival schedule for a complete list of films.

Follow the festival on Facebook and Instagram and use #SCAD and #SAVFF.

The Savannah College of Art and Design is a private, nonprofit, accredited university, offering more than 100 academic degree programs in more than 40 majors across its locations in Atlanta and Savannah, Georgia; Lacoste, France; and online via SCAD eLearning and SCADnow.

The university enrolls approximately 15,000 undergraduate and graduate students from more than 100 countries. The innovative SCAD curriculum is enhanced by advanced professional-level technology, equipment, and learning resources, as well as opportunities for internships, professional certifications, and collaborative projects with corporate partners. In 2019, the prestigious Red Dot Design Rankings placed SCAD as the No. 1 university in the U.S. and in the top two universities in the Americas and Europe for the third consecutive year. Career preparation is woven into every fiber of the university, resulting in a superior alumni employment rate. Visit scad.edu.