As the Austin Film Festival wraps up its conference weekend, the big winners from this year’s screenplay and film competitions have been announced. Known as one of the best writers’ festivals in the world, this year’s festival has not disappointed as attendees have heard some great pitches, read some great scripts, and learned quite a bit about the art of screenwriting.
We’ve also all seen some great films as well as gotten to host a round-table on micro-budget filmmaking with some talented filmmakers from this year’s festival.
To honor the best and brightest from this year’s competitions though let’s look at the award winners.
Austin Film Festival 2024 Award Winners
Announced during this year’s AFF Award Luncheon, both the screenplay and film winners took the stage along with some big and inspirational names in the industry including Robin Swicord, Kathleen Kennedy, Ronald D. Moore, Justin Marks, and Rachel Kondo.
2024 Film Competition Award & Fellowship Winners
This year’s Austin Film Festival jury competition featured 11 different categories of competition with winner being selected by a jury consisting of Roy Lee (Barbarian, It, The Ring), Tazbah Rose Chavez (Reservation Dogs, Resident Aline, Sex Lives of College Girls), and So Young Shelly Yo (Smoking Tigers, Soft Sounds of Peeling Fruit, Moonwalk With Me) and several others.
Here are the winners for the different competition categories:
- Narrative Feature Presented by Big Indie Pictures – Color Book; writer/director: David Fortune
- Documentary Feature – Desert Angel; director: Vincent DeLuca
- Comedy Vanguard Feature – Lady Parts; writer: Bonnie Gross, director: Nancy Boyd
- Dark Matters Feature presented by Vertigo Entertainment – In Vitro; writer: Tom McKeith, Talia Zucker, Will Howarth; director: Tom McKeith, Will Howarth
- Narrative Short – Punter; writer/director: Jason Adam Maselle
- Student Short – Lice; writer/director: Vindhya Gupta
- Documentary Short – I Am Ready, Warden; director: Smriti Mundhra
- Animated Short – Yuck!; writer/director: Loïc Espuche
- Produced Digital Series – Sasha Counters!; writer: Anna Zaytseva and Daria Maslovskaya, director: Anna Zaytseva
- Enderby Entertainment Filmmaking Fellowship Award – Special Delivery; writer/director: Emily Everhard
- Texas Short Film Award presented by Aduro Studios &Film and Shorthand Camera -There’s a Klansman in the Trunk!; writer/director: Xavier Ingram
2024 Film Screenplay Competition Award & Fellowship Winners
Along with the film competition, the Austin Film Festival also featured 18 screenplay competition categories and were awarded by a panel of judges including Jameel Saleem (co-executive producer/writer Bob’s Burgers; writer South Park, Disenchantment), Peter Craig (The Town, The Batman, Bad Boys for Life, parts 1 and 2 of The Hunger Games: Mockingjay), and Wendy Calhoun (Empire, Prodigal Son, Nashville).
- Drama Feature Screenplay Award presented by The Writers Guild of America, East – Hung Over by Michail Eggelhoefer
- Drama Teleplay Pilot Award – The Mitfords by Vivian Kerr
- Drama Teleplay Spec Award – The Great: A Hole In Horizon by Rosy Lum
- Comedy Feature Screenplay Award – Love That for You by Forrest Brown
- Comedy Teleplay Pilot Award – Florence Unfiltered by Heather Osterman-Davis and Sarah Ball
- Comedy Teleplay Spec Award – Abbott Elementary: Has Been by Forrest Hanson
- Short Screenplay Award – The Dyson-Nüwa Project by Joey Yu
- Scripted Digital Series Award – UR Killing Me by Michael Iannconi and Sarah Moen
- Fiction Podcast Award presented by Realm – Saint Cassandra by Zaity Salman
- Playwriting Award – Insertion by Sarah Groustra
- Horror Screenplay Award presented by Vertigo Entertainment – Pound for Pound by Benjamin R. Moody
- Sci-Fi Screenplay Award – Audrey by Imogen Grace
- YMH Studios Comedy Fellowship – Chasing Shadows by Tony Ferrendelli and Kim Turner
- Big Indie Screenwriting Fellowship – X Marks the Spot by Mason Greer
- TV Comedy Fellowship sponsored by the Nickelodeon Writing Program – Screech of Betrayal by Joshua Logan
- Enderby Entertainment Award – Megaball by Aaron Kozak
- Josephson Entertainment Screenwriting Fellowships – TV Fellowship: The G.Y.M by Dani Hanks; Feature Fellowship winner is Separated by Jessica Sieff
The Austin Film Festival also hosts an annual Young Filmmakers Competition for ages 13-18 which is free to enter and open to the next generation of filmmakers from around the world. The winner of this year’s Young Filmmaker competition was Beautiful by Jonah Sachs.
Stay tuned for more coverage from this year’s Austin Film Festival, including our podcast round-table interview with several up-and-coming microbudget filmmakers.
Author: Jourdan Aldredge
This article comes from No Film School and can be read on the original site.
