NYICFF: 'The Ocean Duck', 'She Dreams at Sunrise,' To the Bright Side 'win top prizes

April 9 2022

Il New York International Children's Film Festival (NYICFF), announced today (Friday, April 8) the winners of the 2022 festival. Animation dominated the Grand Prize selection, and several of the festival's favorite films and episodic titles were featured at the audience and jury awards.

The ocean duck

This year's Festival jury included Uma Thurman, Geena Davis, Matthew Modine and Kyle MacLahlan, among others. The Oscar-qualifying jury award for the animated short film went to director Huda Razzak's The Ocean Duck. “This year's Festival presented such a beautiful and strong selection,” said Oscar-nominated juror Nora Twomey (The Breadwinner) of the 2022 Festival schedule.

Co-directed by Anh Ngo, The Ocean Duck is a 2D hybrid film that takes inspiration from Rumi's poetry and illuminated manuscripts to tell a modern story about a young woman who visits her grandmother in the hospital during a flood, which causes memories of the past as well as fantastic visions in the present.

The announcement of the award concluded with the Grand Prize Awards, which both went to animated projects. The Grand Prize for Short Film went to She Dreams at Sunrise by director Camrus Johnson, whose previous short, Grab My Hand: A Letter to My Dad, won the NYICFF 2020 Jury Award for Animated Short. In this heartwarming 2D film, an older woman escapes her mundane reality through her dreams, while her attentive and optimistic great-grandson helps her reconnect with what she truly misses.

She dreams at dawn

The Grand Prize for the feature film went to China's To the Bright Side by Xiya Lan (You Look Scary at NYICFF 2017), Nimoni Li, Yi Zhao, Kun Yu, Gaoxiang Liu, Maoning Liu and Chen Chen, the first kind collection of stories based on Chinese picture books. The omnibus film consists of seven short films created with distinct styles and techniques, which take viewers on an extraordinary journey through China past and present, urban and rural, real and mythical.

Animation also won most of the categories of the Audience Award, winning for ...

Age 3+ - Franzy's soup kitchen (shorts for the little ones) | Ana Chubinidze | France, Georgia
Age 8+ - Mom is Beating the Rain (Short Films Two) | Hugo de Faucompret | France
Age 10+ - The Fall (Heebie Jeebies Short Films) | Desirae Witte | Canada
Ages 12 and up - It was just a rock that looked like someone (shorts three) | Matisse Gonzalez | Mexico
Episodic program - Moominvalley (feature film program) | Nigel Davies, Darren Robbie and Jay Grace for Brave Animations | Finland, United Kingdom
Grown Ups Award, feature film - Charlotte | Tahir Rana & Éric Warin | Belgium, Canada, France

Sop Kitchen by Franzy | The fall | Mom is raining heavily

“We are so grateful to our beloved audience and extraordinary jury for rightly recognizing incredible cinematic talent on the NYICFF 2022 list,” said programming director Maria-Christina Villaseñor. “It was so meaningful to celebrate cinema as a shared and shared experience across generations, in theater and online,” said Villaseñor. "It is a testament to the NYICFF's resilience and the power of the film to harness big ideas, expand representation and celebrate meaning and joy, both on and off screen."

The live-action award winners included Jefferson Stein's Burros (jury prize), Zoey Martinson's Cupids (Audience, 6+), and Samantha Knowles' Generation Impact: The Coder (Grown Ups Award, short).

It was just a rock that looked like someone | Carlotta | Moominvalle

Celebrating its 25th anniversary season as North America's largest and most prestigious film festival for young audiences, and marking its return to film and events in person, the festival ran over three weekends starting on 4 March, at the SVA Theater. A virtual festival program ran from March 16th to April 6th. From thousands of entries submitted from around the world, each screening program has been carefully curated for NYICFF's dedicated audience of over 28.000 children, families, educators, filmmakers, film buffs and industry professionals. Visit the NYICFF website to find out more.

nyicff.org

Go to the source of the article on www.animationmagazine.net