Sony honored young global filmmakers at the fourth annual Future Filmmakers Awards ceremony held on Thursday night on the Hollywood studio lot.
During a gala in the historic Scenic Arts Building, director Will Gluck presented the best fiction prize to Britain’s Jack Hughes for Deadheading, a story about a wife determined to use all means necessary to secure her terminally ill husband’s dream allotment garden after he is given just months to live.
In the non-fiction category, the prize went to Singapore’s Christine Seow for Two Travelling Aunties, which follows two fifty-something women trading conventional life for the open road. The award was presented by indie producer Milissa Kazuko Douponce, who also founded Summer & Company.
Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom director Justin Chadwick presented the animation prize to Scandinavian filmmakers Michelle Brøndum and Ida Melum for Ovary-Acting, a stop motion animated film about a young woman stuck at her sister’s baby shower and forced to reflect on whether she wants to have children or not after unexpectedly giving birth to her reproductive organs.
Cuba’s Ana A. Alpizar earned the student film prize for Norheimsund, which centers on a long-distance romance with an older Norwegian man promising to lift a Cuban girl and her mother out of poverty, until the fantasy begins to crack. Yojiro Asai, senior general manager of the imaging marketing division at Sony Corp., presented the student prize.
