Last night at the festival, the annual Dragons and Tigers Award for Young Cinema, awarded to a distinctive film made early in a filmmaker’s career which has not yet won international recognition, was handed out. For the first time, I not only managed to see all of the competing films, but I attended the awards ceremony as well. The jury, composed of critic/programmers Adam Cook, Tom Charity and Geoff Gardener chose to recognize two films in addition to the overall winner: a special mention for Chai Chunya and Four Ways to Die in My Hometown and a first runner-up for Vivian Qu and Trap Street. The winner was Ikeda Akira, for his Anatomy of a Paperclip. These were my three favorites in the competition as well, all very good and well-deserving their recognition, though I probably would have reversed the order with Four Ways winning and Paperclip third. It was a great series of films and a fun competition, I’m already looking forward to next year.

I managed to snap some pictures with my phone from my seat ten rows back: