The Slamdance Film Festival has announced the winners of its 2023 Jury and Audience Awards. In the Narrative Feature category, “Waiting for the Light to Change” took top honor, while “Starring Jerry as yourself” served a top honor. double function as winner of the Narrative and Jury prizes in the documentary category. The film’s own Jerry Hsu received the festival’s Best Performance Award.
Other Jury Award winners include “The Underbug” for Breakouts Feature, “Palookaville” for Episodes and “Millstone” on the show Unstoppable.
“Honeycomb” won the Audience Award for Episodes, and “American Pot Story: Oaksterdam” took home the Unstoppable competition award.
This year’s AGBO scholarship, presented by 2022 winner and current Slamdance jury member Ethan Eng, was awarded to Tij D’Oyen. His short film “Lollygag” was presented as part of the Narrative Shorts competition.
The filmmakers voted to award the George Starks Spirit of Slamdance Award to Aaron David Harris, Project Director of Digital, Interactive and Gaming (DIG) H-Squad: The Interactive Experience.
“Slamdance ’23 has featured an incredible array of new independent work that pushes the boundaries of film language while expressing what it means to be alive in today’s world. We celebrate our winners and, more importantly, the overall strength of this year’s show that elevates the art of cinema,” Slamdance president and founder Peter Baxter said in a statement.
Created in 1995, the 29th edition of the festival marked the first face-to-face return of the Unstoppable section since before the pandemic. The films, chosen from a pool of more than 7,600 submissions, were screened in Park City and Salt Lake City and online from January 23-29.
As per festival tradition, all films chosen for the Narrative Feature and Documentary Feature competition categories are directorial debuts with no US distribution, made on budgets of less than $1 million.
Read the full list of winners below.
GRAND JURY AWARDS – FEATURES
Grand Prize of the Narrative Feature Film Jury: Waiting for the Light to Change (Dir. Linh Tran)
Honorable Mention: Where the Road Leads (Dir. Nina Ognjanović)
Grand Jury Prize for Documentary Feature: Starring Jerry as himself (Dir. Law Chen)
Honorable Mention: Silent Love (Dir. Mark Kozakiewicz)
Breakouts Feature Grand Jury Prize: The Underbug (Dir. Shujaat Saudagar)
Honorable Mention: Spectators (Dir. Kimi Takesue)
Episodes Grand Jury Prize: Palookaville (Dir. Theodore Collatos)
Honorable Mention: Off Fairfax (Dir. Erica Eng)
GRAND JURY AWARDS – UNSTOPPABLE
Unstoppable Jury Grand Prix: Millstone (Dir. Peter Hoffman Kimball)
Honorable Mention: My Eyes Are Up Here (Dir. Nathan Morris)
JURY AWARDS – SHORT FILMS
Grand Jury Prize for Narrative Short Films: The Sidewalk Artist (Dir. David Velez and Brandon Rivera)
Honorable Mention: Gwendoline (Dir Joaquim Bayle)
Grand Prize of the Documentary Short Jury: “The unicorn in snow pants suddenly ran away” (Dir. Philipp
Schaeffer)
Honorable Mention: Moomin” (Dir. Zach Dorn)
Experimental Short Films Grand Jury Prize: Red Threads (Dir. Yuchi Ma)
Honorable Mention: Grillz & Mirrors (Dir. Michael U. Olowu)
Grand Jury Prize for Animated Short Films: ¡Hot Dogs! (Dir. Frank Volk)
Honorable Mention: Silver Cave (Dir. Caibei Cai)
FESTIVAL AWARDS:
The AGBO Scholarship, presented by Joe and Anthony Russo, Award Winner: Tij D’Oyen Director of
“Lollipop”
Slamdance Acting Award: Jerry Hsu for starring as Jerry as himself
George Starks Spirit of Slamdance Award Winner: Aaron David Harris, Director of H-Squad: The
Interactive experience.
AWARDS FROM THE PUBLIC:
Audience Award for Best Narrative Film: Where the Road Leads (Dir. Nina Ognjanović)
Audience Award for Documentary Feature: Starring Jerry as himself (Dir. Law Chen)
Episode Audience Award: Honeycomb (Dir. Sam Roden)
Audience Award for Unstoppable: American Pot Story: Oaksterdam (Dir. Dan Katzir and Ravit Markus)
