The Bentonville Film Festival today announced the jury prize winners for their 8th annual Festival. The week-long Festival, led by Academy Award-winning actor and Festival Chair Geena Davis, is known for its dedication to championing female, non-binary, LGBTQIA+, BIPOC, and people with disabilities’ voices in entertainment.
Every Day in Kaimuki was awarded Best Narrative Feature with director Alika Tengan and cast in attendance. Gretchen Stoeltje’s Shouting Down Midnight took home the jury award for Best Documentary Feature. Georgia, by Jayil Pak, was selected for Best Short Film and Chiqui, by Carlos Cardona, won for Best Episodic. Special honors presented this evening included, Fin Argus with the Rising Star Award for their truly outstanding talent that has captured the attention of both the public, entertainment and media industry, and Effie Brown with the Rising to the Challenge Award honoring her success supporting indie film projects, both on and off screen.
The 2022 BFF Jury included six experts across three categories: Narrative judges included Producer, Bird Runningwater, Actor/Filmmaker, Yolonda Ross and Producer Shrihari Sathe; Documentary judges included Emmy Award-winning actress Shohreh Aghdashloo, Producer/Distributor Karin Chien and Filmmaker Isabel Bethencourt; Episodic judges included Award-winning Producer Effie Brown, Director/Executive Producer Kitao Sakurai and Filmmaker Liz Cardenas; Short judges included Filmmaker/Author Justine Bateman, Co-Founder/CEO of Inspire Justice JLove Calderon and Director of Transgender Representation at GLAAD Alex Schmider.
In the BFF 2022 juried competition program, 82% is from content creators who identify as female or gender non-confirming; 65% who identify as BIPOC, Asian, or Pacific Islander; 62% who identify as LGBTQIA+; 42% who are over 50; and 20% who identify as a person with disability. In addition for the 2022 program, onscreen leads are 90% women/gender non conforming, 60% BIPOC, 25% LGBTQ+ and 12% representing talent with disabilities.
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