Indy Shorts announced more than $35,000 in cash prizes for its seventh edition, including for Grand Prize winners “Crust,” “Wouldn’t Make It Any Other Way,” and “The Brown Dog,” which features the voice talents of the late Michael K. Williams and his former Boardwalk Empire castmate, Steve Buscemi.
The three films will receive $5,000 each, and qualify for the 2025 Academy Awards® in their respective categories.
“With a record number of 5,130 short film submissions, and only 206 shorts selected for the festival, it is a remarkable accomplishment to be recognized as an award winner today,” said Indy Shorts Artistic Director Greg Sorvig at Saturday’s awards. “Congratulations to all of the award-winning filmmakers whose shorts stood out to our esteemed jury members in a sea of amazing films.”
“Crust,” a German film by Jens Kevin Georg, is a dark comedy about a boy who must get his first scar to earn his family’s respect. The film’s producers, Fritzie Benesch and Charlotte Jülide Hansen, recounted to MovieMaker how the production had to travel to Poland to track down a working roller coaster pivotal to the plot.
“The Brown Dog,” a gorgeous animated short directed by Jamie-James Medina and Nadia Hallgren, features recordings made by Buscemi and Williams roughly a decade ago. Williams, who died in 2021, voices a security guard who spends his hours in a booth contemplating his place in the universe.
And “Wouldn’t Make It Any Other Way,” directed by Hao Zhou, is a documentary about a costume designer who leaves Iowa to return to their hometown in Guam and make costumes for a children’s theater.
Indy Shorts, an offshoot of the feature-focused Heartland Film Festival, is on MovieMaker‘s list of the 25 Coolest Film Festivals and 50 Film Festivals Worth the Entry Fee. You can read our coverage of some of this year’s films here.
More Indy Shorts Winners
This year’s edition featured more Indiana-rooted shorts than ever before — 32 in all. The Indiana Spotlight Award and the $2,000 cash prize was presented to directors Adam Oppenheim and Samuel-Ali Mirpoorian for their film “Saving Superman.”
Indy Shorts also introduced a new cash award in partnership the TDB Family Foundation. The foundation’s executive director, Will Stoller-Lee, presented the The Lens of Hope Award and $2,500 cash prize to “Cycling Without Age,” by Isaac Seigel-Boettner, which is focused on a national program in which senior citizens are taken for cycling trips to stay connected with their communities. The award also includes a corresponding $2,500 cash prize for a nonprofit associated with the film, which was awarded to Cycling Without Age of Greater Indianapolis.
The Overall Audience Choice Award went to “Jane Austen’s Period Drama,” a comic short about a Jane Austen heroine explaining menstruation to a suitor. It was directed by Julia Aks and Steve Pinder.
The Narrative Audience Choice Award went to Cindy Lee’s “The Last Ranger,” about efforts to save endangered rhinos.
Jonathan Cipiti’s basketball film “In the Paint” took home the Documentary Audience Choice Award.
The whimsical “Luki and the Lights,” directed by Toby Cochran, won the Animated Audience Choice Award.
“The Ice Cream Man,” Robert Moniot’s film about a real-life Jewish businessman (Noah Emmerich) who stood up to the Nazis in 1940, won the Indiana Spotlight Audience Choice Award. It was shot partly in an Indiana ice cream parlor.
Ballard C. Boyd’s “Night Session,” one of two films at the festival to feature Curb Your Enthusiasm treasure Richard Kind, won the Comedy Audience Choice Award.
And Michael Gabriele’s “Room Tone,” about a member of a film crew member who will do anything for silence, won the Horror Audience Choice Award. (We previously wrote about another of Gabriele’s excellent horror shorts, “Get Away,” when it played at Montreal’s Fantasia film festival last year.)
Finally, the High School Audience Choice Award went to Caleb Reese Paul’s atmospheric, nostalgia-focused “The Lake in the Sky.” You can watch the trailer here:
Main image: Greg Sorvig, center, surrounded by Indy Shorts winners.