Hey everyone, thanks for your patience as we finalized our Award winners. We want to thank all of our filmmakers for trusting us with their films—every film we screened was an integral part of our vision of Long Distance Film Festival. This wouldn’t be possible without you.
We’re very pleased to announce the Audience and Jury Award winners for the 2021 Long Distance Film Festival!
AUDIENCE AWARDS
Our audience awards were decided each night by the attendees of the festival, and we’re thrilled to celebrate the three films that resonated with our audience—that’s you!—the most.
What’s Mine Is Yours
Playing docs-fiction games with rarely-seen glee, What’s Mine Is Yours reminds us that the political, the cultural, and the personal — specifically sex in a porta potty — are always delicately intertwined. A love story with a sense of history, a sense of humor. a sense of how images are made and shared. – Jessica Dunn Rovinelli
Intimate Views
There’s a classical nature to the look and feel of Intimate Views, a meditative domestic drama that quietly observes the lives of two different couples. Hollywood filmmakers could learn from the way director Joseph Barglowski uses silence to pull viewers into the world of the film. – Jourdain Searles
The Village
There is a sense of safety that comes with Jenny Dinwoodie’s film, the director is inviting you to her neighborhood and in doing so we were welcomed into her home. We as viewers got to see the wildlife, families and pets that live there. It is a cozy, safe little village and we hope to be welcomed there again –Elias ZX
JURY AWARDS
Our esteemed jury members chose these three movies to receive the Jury Awards.
Those Who Drown Cling to Foam
Through animated sketches that elegantly and movingly sketch future anguish to come, Those Who Drown Cling to Foam is both a memorial to the Kosovo War and a prelude to it. Delicate, heart-felt, and insistent, its delicate technique finds a fragile thread running through history and clings tight to it. – Jessica Dunn Rovinelli
A Quiet Declaration of Independence
With vibrant colors and a warm glow, A Quiet Declaration of Independence paints a visually striking portrait of a young woman spending Christmas alone. Director Dexter Marsh-Taylor excels at capturing the many micro-expressions we cycle through during deep sadness. –Jourdain Searles
Shadows in a Landscape
Paying homage to everyone from Chris Marker (implicitly) to Robert Plant (explicitly) while remaining vividly personal from start to finish, Edwin Miles’ hypnotic “Shadows in a Landscape” is a potent ghost story in plain sight, and a rich meditation on how the past avails itself to the present for those who know where to look. Zuhair Mehari’s score deserves special mention for the texture it brings to the film — alien, as unstable as a memory, but full of feeling. – David Ehrlich
HONORABLE MENTION
existing is a bitch rn
Existing, indeed, is a bitch right now, but this lovely short makes that a bit more tolerable. Deliciously fluid and agile, King Bosnian’s animated tragicomedy winningly finds a visual language of the semi-abstract that is capable of translating the confusing intensity of 2020 into both a movingly specific account of dysphoria and loneliness and a shockingly universal diagnosis of the currently. – Jessica Dunn Rovinelli
Congratulations to all of our award-winners and honorable mentions! We are excited to announce we are hard at work at a zine celebrating this year’s programming. Thank you again!