Columbia Filmmakers Win at Tribeca Film Festival 2019
Over twenty-three Columbia filmmakers were selected to participate in this year’s Tribeca Film Festival which ran from April 24 to May 5th, and several took home awards. The festival announced their winning filmmakers on May 4th marking the culmination of its 2019 Festival, where 113 feature-length films, 63 short films, and 33 immersive storytelling projects representing 44 countries were screened.
House of Hummingbird (Beol-sae) written, directed and co-produced by alumna Bora Kim '11 was named Best International Feature Film. It also won an award for Best Cinematography and its star, Ji-hu Park, won best actress. The South Korean movie, is a coming-of-age tale about a Seoul eighth grader. The film debuted in competition at the Busan International Film Festival in October 2018 where it won the NETPAC Award and the KNN Audience Award. House of Hummingbird was also awarded the Grand Prix by the Generation 14plus international jury for Best Film at the 69th Berlin International Film Festival.
Iniciales SG (Initials SG), co-written & co-directed by Adjunct faculty member, Rania Attieh, screened in the Narrative Feature Film category. Attieh received the Nora Ephron Award for the film as well as a $25,000 prize. The award, created seven years ago, honors excellence in storytelling by a female writer or director embodying the spirit and boldness of the late filmmaker. In Iniciales SG, an aging, Argentine, Serge Gainsbourg wannabe struggles to deal with a career he can't seem to get on track, an affair he doesn't want, and a crime he didn't mean to commit.
St. Louis Superman, a film by alumni Smriti Mundhra ‘09 and Sami Khan ‘09 received a Special Jury Mention in the Best Documentary Short category. In St. Louis Superman, Bruce Franks Jr., a Ferguson activist and battle rapper who was elected to the overwhelmingly white and Republican Missouri House of Representatives, must overcome both personal trauma and political obstacles to pass a critical bill for his community.
Keep It Together, a feature project written & directed by Bane Fakih '19 and produced by Federica Belletti '18 & Birgit Gernböck ’16, was selected as one of the recipients of the Tribeca Film Institute's Tribeca All Access grant. Set in 1976 civil-war-torn Beirut, Keep It Together is the story of a young rebellious woman who fights to free her neighborhood from the control of the Holiday-Inn Sniper and to maintain her relationship with a woman bound by social norms.