It's hard to believe it's been only a week since I packed up the car and headed south to Austin. In terms of the number of films I have seen and the film-relevant information I've processed, it feels more like a month, and I mean that in the nicest way possible. Anyway, while film screenings continue through March 19, the competition section is over and the award winners have been announced.

 

The major prizes went to Tristan Patterson's Dragonslayer (Grand Jury Winner, documentary features), Robbie Pickering's Natural Selection (Grand Jury Winner, narrative features and Audience Award, narrative features), and Vikram Gandhi's Kumaré (Audience Award, documentary features). Dragonslayer also picked up awards for cinematography (Eric Koretz) and Natural Selection for editing (Michelle Tesoro), score/music (iZLER, Curt Schneider) screenplay (Robbie Pickering) and for breakthrough performances from Rachael Harris and Matt O'Leary.

 

Other Jury Award winners in the feature competition include Kyle Henry and Heather Courtney (editing, documentary features) for Where Soldiers Come From, The Fisherman Three and Ben Fries for (music, documentary features) for The City Dark, Eliot Davis for A Year in Mooring (cinematography, narrative features) and Evan Ross for a breakthrough performance in 96 Minutes (narrative features). Audience awards also went to directors Jeff Meyers for Becoming Santa (Spotlight Premieres) and Andrew Haigh for Weekend (Emerging Visions).

 

Director Mikey Please won the SXSW Wholphin Award (named for the quarterly DVD magazine) for The Eagleman Stag, and Sophia Takal won the SXSW Chicken & Egg Emergent Narrative Woman Director Award for Green. Directors Steve Mims and Joe Bailey Jr. won the Louis Black/Lone Star Award for their documentary Incendiary: The Willingham Case. | Sarah Boslaugh