The New York-based Australian duo Soda Jerk won the Blackmagic Design Australian Innovation Award ($70,000) for their feature Hello Dankness, which utilises excerpts from around 300 different film and video sources – including Wayne’s World, The Social Network and Sausage Party – to construct a freewheeling satire of contemporary US politics.
The First Nations Film Creative Award ($20,000 cash and $25,000 of financial services) went to Adrian Russell Wills and Gillian Moody as co-directors of Kindred, an autobiographical documentary about the complexities of being an Aboriginal child raised in a white world.
Thomas Charles Hyland on the set of This Is Going To Be Big, which won the festival’s audience prize.Credit: Kelly Gardner
Thomas Charles Hyland’s This Is Going to Be Big, an observational documentary about the staging of an original musical featuring the songs of John Farnham at a special school in regional Victoria, was a dual winner, collecting both the MIFF Schools Youth Jury Award and the publicly voted audience award.
The youth jury described the film as “an uproariously funny and moving celebration of individuality that captures the awkwardness and excitement of adolescence”.
Hyland said he felt “blown away” by the honours. “My feelings are vicariously filtered through the students and families and teachers and the community that really we were focusing on,” he said.
Asked why the documentary resonated with audiences, Hyland said: “I hope it’s because it feels honest, and it feels like people are sharing parts of themselves that are very real. It’s extremely powerful to show your own vulnerability and I think that lets everyone know that we’re all in this together.”
Hyland said it was a coming of age film where young people were “trying to build their confidence, work out who they are and where they’re going”.
“That’s such a universal experience that we all have, regardless of where you are in the world and how you see yourself and other people see you I think at its core that is something that we all understand.”
The in-cinema sessions of the festival finish on Sunday, with the virtual festival, MIFF Play, running online until August 27.
