Oscar-Qualifying HollyShorts Film Festival Hands Out Awards; ‘We Were Meant To’ Claims $60K Prize

The 19th HollyShorts Film Festival has handed out its awards, including the Grand Prix Best Short Award to We Were Meant To, an honor that comes with a $60,000 prize from Panavision.

Tari Wariebi directed We Were Meant To, set in a reality where “Black men have wings and their first flight is a rite of passage.” The film stars Tim Johnson Jr. The Grand Prix Award qualifies the short for Oscar consideration. Also qualifying for the Oscars are Misan Harriman’s The After, which won Best Live Action Short, Rita Basulto’s Humo (Smoke), winner of the Best Animation Award, and Elisa Gambino’s Every Day After, winner of Best Documentary Short.

The After stars David Oyelowo and Jessica Plummer. Animated winner Humo, meanwhile, “follows a boy called Daniel, who travels to a dark destination known as the smokehouse.”

Every Day After tells the short of Jary, a Philippine boy born with a cleft palate. His mother and father rejected him at birth because of his facial difference, but his older sister Jessa stepped in to take a caring and parental role in his life. The film follows Jary as he undergoes his first surgery to repair his palate, an operation facilitated by the nonprofit Smile Train. Gambino directed the film, while her husband Neal Broffman shot it (in lustrous black & white). Elaine Jose Bobadilla produced, while Dave A. Liu served as executive producer. Every Day After held its world premiere at HollyShorts.

The HollyShorts awards ceremony was moved up a day to Saturday to avoid the onslaught of Hurricane Hilary. The festival handed out additional awards in the categories below: 

Best Genre Category Presented by Hot Pot Productions – Tim Webber’s FLITE

Best Horror – Nuhash Humayun’s FOREIGNERS ONLY

Best International – Mauricio Sierra’s CIELA

Latinx Award – Duván Duque Vargas’s ALL INCLUSIVE

Best LGBTQIA+ – Niki Ang’s MAXINE

Best Midnight Madness – Will Suen and Sejon Im’s SWEET JUICES

Best Music Video – KAJO | Evelyn Lee’s REM KOOLHAUS’

Best Music Video Film – Alexandre Moors’s LOVE SICK 

Best Producer – Lloyd Lee Choi’s CLOSING DYNASTY

Best SAGIndie – Logan Vaughn’s BENNY AND JAMES

Hawk Films Screenplay Award – Joaquin Palma’s EGGPLANT

Best Sci-Fi – James A. Sims’s D.A.D.

Script Compass Screenplay Award – Nick Perry’s THE GIFTING

Kodak Best Shot on Film, 35MM – Maegan Houang’s ASTONISHING LITTLE FEET

Kodak Best Shot on Film, 16MM – Joe Zakko’s SUBWAY STOPS

Kodak Best Shot on Film, 8MM – Alan Richard Halls’ WHO THE F**K IS JACKY BUMPERS? 

Kodak Best Shot on Film, Honorable Mention – Alden Ehrenreich’s SHADOW BROTHER SUNDAY

Social Impact Award – Sterling Hampton IV’s MERMAN

Best Thriller – Rita Borodiyanski’s TIME OUT

Best Student Film – Marta Szymanek’s EDEN

Best TV – Arden Grier and Kirsten Knisely’s EARTH GIRL

Best VFX – James A. Sims’ D.A.D. 

Best Web Series – Stacey Maltin’s MASHED 

Best Female Screenplay Presented By BeCine – K.D. Chalk’s SURVIVED BY

HollyShorts Honorable Mention – Raul Sanchez and Pasqual Gutierrez SHUT UP AND FISH

Best TV Screenplay – Ari Donnelly’s POWER COUPLE