Awards

Our Jury awards the Bermuda Shorts Award. This prize is presented to the best narrative short film screened in-competition.

BIFF is a qualifying film festival for the Short Film (live action) category of the Academy Awards. Please check for eligibility details at www.oscars.org/rules. Previous television or Internet broadcast will disqualify a film from consideration for our short film competition. Since becoming a qualifying festival in 2004, two of our Shorts Award winners have gone on to win: Wasp (2005) and Toyland (2009).

New in 2012, our audiences will vote for two Audience Choice Awards: one in the feature film category and the other in the short film category.

BIFF 2011 Award Winners

Best Narrative Feature
The BIFF 2011 winner of the Best Narrative Feature is Submarine. Submarine is a captivating coming-of-age story with an offbeat edge from the UK. The film's soundtrack featured songs by Alex Turner of British band, Arctic Monkeys.

Larry Gross, BIFF 2011 Juror, said: "The fiction film jury awards first prize to writer-director Richard Ayoade and the superb cast of Submarine, a masterful debut film adapted from John Dunthorne's novel. The hilarious self-absorption of Oliver the narrator-hero, the charmingly mysterious yet ordinary Jordana his classmate and first-love, the aching absurdity of Oliver's over-educated, emotionally dim-witted parents, are all incisively observed, in a manner that incorporates fantasy, cartoon-like stylisation and sudden jolts of realistic observation. Submarine achieves the difficult feat of making the familiar story of adolescent sexual and emotional coming-of-age feel fresh and new and reminds us that laugh-out-loud entertaining movies can also be intelligent and heartfelt."

Best Documentary
The best competition documentary at this festival was judged to be The Redemption of General Butt Naked. From the USA, is this story of a brutal Liberian warlord who reinvented himself as a Christian evangelist, fighting with nothing but an AK-47, a pair of leather shoes and a belief he is possessed supernatural powers that made him impervious to bullets. The General and his army of child soldiers are said to have called thousands during the country horrific 14-year civil war.

Documentary juror, Duncan Hall, said: "Directors Eric Strauss and Daniele Anastasion have made a compelling film about a charismatic and disturbing figure. The film stayed with us long after we viewed it. Whether you believe that a former rebel warlord turned evangelist who is responsible for 20,000 deaths and many more ruined lives, is capable or deserving of redemption - or indeed is sincere in his desire to apologise for the pain he has caused - The Redemption of General Butt Naked again proves that truth really is stranger than fiction."

The documentary category had six runners with topics ranging from the pioneering black rock band Fishbone to the contradictions of modern Russian and the reunion of a Saharawi refugee with her mother. The category also featured two films about political elections. Race looks at the racial undertones of the post-Hurricane Katrina election in New Orleans and An African Election looks behind the scenes at the complex political machinery of the 2008 elections is Ghana.

Bermuda Shorts Award
The winner of the Bermuda Shorts Award this year is Lost. A Spanish production set in Somalia and directed by Albertto Dorado, depicts 10-year-old Sallif talking to a UN soldier but nothing is as it initially appears.

Tommaso Fiachino, Juror, said: "Lost is a simple and powerful look at a complicated part of the world, presented succinctly in just four minutes."

The short film, Easy Money, also got a special mention for its strong ensemble acting from the BIFF jury. Easy Money is also a Spanish production. Directed by Carlos Montero, it depicts a gay escort getting way more than he bargained for after knocking on a hotel room door.

There were 32 shorts screened this year for BIFF 2011 in keeping with Academy rules as BIFF is recognised by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences as a Qualifying Festival for the Short Film Oscar.

Audience Choice Award
Themba was voted the audience's favourite film at BIFF 2011. Set in the spectacualar landscape of the Eastern Cape in South Africa, it is the moving story of a young Xhosa boy who dreams of being a soccer star and longs for his absent father to return home. Writer/director Stefanie Sycholt's film Malunde screened at BIFF 2002.