Click here for Greater Long Island newsletters. Click here to download the iPhone app.
The 24th annual Stony Brook Film Festival wrapped up this past weekend at Stony Brook University’s Staller Center.
Over the course of 10 days, 36 films ranging from short and long-form, American and foreign, dramatic and comedic were aired. On Saturday, the popular movie fest held its annual award ceremony.
And for the second year in a row— and ninth time in festival history— a Grand Prize winner was selected.
“When the jury and the audience rank the same film the highest then it receives a Grand Prize,” said Alan Inkles, the festival’s director.
The prestigious honor went to Chuskit, a South Asian drama about a paraplegic girl confined to the indoors who hopes to go to school. The 90-minute Indian movie, directed and written by Priya Ramasubban, was filmed entirely in the Himalayas.
“This festival was one of the most competitive yet,” said Inkles, “nearly 3,000 films were submitted, and only 36 were selected for the festival, so Chuskit was really a very special film– it’s a must-see.”
Another top award, Jury Award for Best Feature, went to In God I Trust, a suspenseful drama that focuses on racism, guns, and religion in the U.S.
“It shows different people’s viewpoints from how they grow up in the different environments,” said the film’s director Maja Zdanowski, of Toronto. “There is a reason why people believe in certain things.”
Scroll down to see the full list of awards.
- Grand Prize: Chuskit, a South Asian drama about a paraplegic girl confined to the indoors who hopes to go to school.
- 2019 Jury Award for Best Feature: In God I Trust, a suspenseful drama that focuses on racism, guns, and religion in the U.S.
- 2019 Audience Choice for Best Feature: The Silent Revolution, a German film that follows a class of seniors in the communist-controlled GDR during the Hungarian Uprising of 1956.
- 2019 Audience Award Best Short: Toke is Cheap, a 23-minute feature of a teenage boy who sells marijuana is met with an unusual request from his father.
- 2019 Jury Award Best Short: The Portraitist, a 15-minute long French film of an elderly man’s suicide attempt that is interrupted when he learns of his granddaughter is ill.
Top: Stony Brook Film Fest director Alan Inkles with Grand Prize-winning director Priya Ramasubban of Chuskit (Credit: Stony Brook Film Festival.)
