New York International Children’s Film Festival Announces 2012 Award Winners
PRESENTED MARCH 25, 2012 AT DGA THEATER
NYICFF 2012 JURY: UMA THURMAN, MATTHEW MODINE, GUS VAN SANT, CHRISTINE VACHON, JEFFREY WRIGHT, SUSAN SARANDON, JAMES SCHAMUS, JOHN CANEMAKER, MICHEL OCELOT, TOMM MOORE, LYNNE MCVEIGH, DANA POINTS, ADAM GOPNIK, TAIKA WAITITI, EVAN SHAPIRO
JURY PRIZE WINNING SHORT FILMS QUALIFY FOR THE 85th ACADEMY AWARDS®
NYICFF 2012 WINNERS:
Grand Prize Feature — A Letter to Momo, Hiroyuki Okiura, Japan
Grand Prize Short Film — Capturing Santa, Peter Cattaneo, Ireland
Special Jury Award, Best Animated Short — The Storyteller, Nandita Jain, India/UK
Special Jury Award, Best Live Action Short — Child’s Play, Lars Kornhoff, Germany
Parents Award — The Storyteller, Nandita Jain, India/UK
Audience Award, Ages 3-6 — The Gruffalo’s Child, Uwe Heidschötter/Johannes Weiland, UK
Audience Award, Ages 5-10 — Extinction of the Sabertooth House Cat, Damon Wong, USA
Audience Award, Ages 8-14 — Capturing Santa, Peter Cattaneo, Ireland
Audience Award, Ages 12-18 — I Am a Girl!, Susan Koenen, Netherlands
New York, NY, March 27, 2012 — The 2012 New York Int’l Children’s Film Festival (NYICFF) concluded another sold-out year on Sunday, March 25 with the NYICFF “Best of the Fest” Awards Ceremony and Closing Night Gala. The winners were determined by the NYICFF Jury and audience voting throughout the festival. Executive producer and CEO of Production I.G. Mitsuhisa Ishikawa accepted the Grand Prize Feature Award for his film, A Letter to Momo. Director Nandita Jain attended to accept both the Jury Award and the Parents Award for her film The Storyteller. Filmmaker Susan Koenen was also in attendance to
accept an Audience Award for her documentary I Am a Girl!, along with the film’s subject, Joppe Pelzer. Jury members actors Jeffrey Wright and Matthew Modine, Academy Award®-winning animator John Canemaker and editor-in-chief of Parents magazine Dana Points were all on hand to present awards to winning
filmmakers.
NYICFF 2012 HIGHLIGHTS INCLUDED:
• 100% sold out screenings with a total audience of over 25,000
• 100 films from 25 countries including the best new animated, live action and experimental features and shorts for ages 3-18. Films were presented March 2 through March 25 at the Director’s Guild of America Theater, Peter Norton Symphony Space, IFC Center, Scholastic Theater, NYU’s Cantor Film Center, Asia Society and Walter Reade Theater at Film Society of Lincoln Center.
• Feature Films — US Premiere of Cinderella Moon (China/USA, ages 7+) with Q&A by director Richard Bowen; North American Premiere of Le Tableau (France, ages 7+) with Q&A by director Jean-François Laguionie and screenwriter Anik Le Ray; North American Premiere of The Monkey King, Uproar in Heaven 3D (China, ages 8+) with Q&A by co-directors Su Da and Chen Zhihong. Special event screenings included First Position (USA, ages 8+) with Q&A by director Bess Kargman; Tales of the Night 3D (France, ages 7+) with Q&A by director, animator and NYICFF jury member Michel Ocelot; a special sneak preview of Salaam Dunk (Iraq/USA, ages 9+) with a live Q&A session from Iraq (via Skype) with one of the film’s subjects, Laylan Amir; as well as the US Premiere of A Monster in Paris 3D (France, ages 5+) for NYICFF’s Opening Night Gala.
• Special Events – Preview screenings of DisneyNature’s Chimpanzee (USA, all ages), Sony Pictures’ The Pirates! Band of Misfits 3D (UK, ages 6+); the first US screening in over 10 years of the Beatles animated classic Yellow Submarine (UK, all ages) and a special screening of A Hard Day’s Night (UK, ages 6+); US Premiere of Magic Piano, a 3D animated film program set to Chopin’s famous etudes, accompanied live by student prodigies from the Lang Lang International Foundation and followed by a Q&A with Academy Award®-winning producer Hugh Welchman and Little Postman Director Dorota Kobiela.
• FilmEd Field Trip Program — For the second year, NYICFF expanded its FilmEd Field Trip program, providing over 1,200 students and teachers from Title 1 public schools with the complete festival experience at either the Museum of the Moving Image in Astoria, Queens or the Sony Wonder Technology Lab in Manhattan. Student groups were treated to a special program of short films from NYICFF 2012 complete with voting ballots, filmmaker Q&As and a tour of the museum where the program took place.