Why you should enter the monthly Montreal Indie Short Film Awards
Short films are the perfect way for new filmmakers to showcase their talents. More and more film festivals are catering specifically to bringing short films and their creators out of the woodwork. New stories and new faces are what film festivals like Montreal Indie Short Film Awards are all about.
Montreal Indie Short Film Awards looks to promote short films from a number of genres including drama, horror, experimental, documentary, and animation and accepts submissions from all over the world. The up-and-coming short film festival has already awarded many talented filmmakers and actors in their latest selections and many more opportunities are coming for new submissions.
Opportunity every month
The festival is both annual and monthly. The annual festival awards filmmakers with cash awards and screens their films at the Cinema du Parc of Montreal. The monthly festival selects, awards, promotes and supports with screenings of short films in various platforms.
The festival selects some of the best international independent short films as their official selections to compete in dramatic, documentary, experimental, horror, and animation sections. The festival has a very artistic approach towards the language of cinema, artists and indie filmmaking.
The twelve winning filmmakers are invited to the annual film festival awards where they are honored individually and their short films are screened in a red carpet event at Cinema du Parc of Montreal. One short film of the twelve will be awarded $500 and a statue of recognition.
Categories & awards
There are many categories for new innovators to really shine in their respective genres. Montreal Indie Short Film Awards also makes sure individuals are recognized for their efforts with categories for best film producer, best film editor, best film lead actor/actress, best film cinematographer, and best film scriptwriter.
In the past edition of the festival, the best international short film award went to a female American filmmaker, Kandace Cornell, for her film called The Just. The film was also chosen for the best script. Yurii Onyshchenko from Ukraine took the best directing for Blud. Samantha Casella, the director of To a God Unknown, and Alexandera Bekiou, the director of The Wave Broke, shared the best experimental film from Italy and Germany. A young Israeli director called Ruchama Ehrenhalt was chosen for the best youth cinema award for her film called Give it Back.
The best actor went to a French actor called Joris Adu for his performance in the True Love of Hubert. The best actress went to Andrea Mendez for Wholeheartedly. The best cinematography went to a Turkish film called Sycamore by Mehmet Tigli. The Family Gold from Italy was chosen as the best producer for Pathos, Emanuele Pisano and Maurizio Ravallese. The best edit went to Laurie Chock for Reparations from US. The best animation went to Bellopropello for Shadowland from Switzerland. The best horror went to the Tenant by Edwin Escobar.
International judges
The members of the jury for the Montreal Indie Short Film Awards are professionals working in film industry from Hollywood, Toronto, Montreal, New York and Paris. Glen Reynolds, Sona Moghadam, Hanna Griffiths, Amir Ganjavie, Thierry Malet, and Babak Salari accompanied Baraheni in the last edition of the festival which selected, nominated and awarded films from all over the world.
The Canadian film festival continues to grow with more submissions from some of the best international short films of today. The quality of entries seen by the Montreal Indie Short Film Awards could one day make it a Sundance of short filmmaking.
Submit your own film
There are at least twelve opportunities a year for filmmakers to submit their own works to the festival’s Filmfreeway page. Turn in your short film by the end of this month and maybe you’ll be one of Montreal Indie Short Film Award’s winners by June!
