Two Columbia Films Named Finalists for Student Academy Awards; 'Hasta Encontrarlos' Wins

Update:

Hasta Encontrarlos (Till We Find Them) by Creative Producing student Jean Chapiro (JRN '22) has won a Student Academy Award in the Documentary category. The film is a short-form documentary that depicts the tireless search of the Orizaba and Córdoba families to find their missing loved ones in Mexico. Chapiro produced the film as a 2022 Post-Graduate Reporting Fellow at the Columbia Journalism School, where she received a Reporting Grant in support of her work on the project. Watch a trailer for the documentary below. 

Chapiro is one of 14 winners of the 50th annual Student Academy Awards, which received nearly 2,500 entries this year.

View the complete list of winners here.

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Update: August 23, 2023.

Children of Light and Till We Find Them, two films from Columbia filmmakers, have both moved on to the finalist round in the 2023 Student Academy Awards. 

Children of Light, written, directed, and edited by Minkyu Kang ’22 and produced by Kang and Bofan Zhang ’21, advanced to the finalists in the Narrative Film category alongside just eight other films. It is the only film from an American university to be selected as a finalist. Supported by a Katharina Otto-Bernstein ’92 (’86 CC) Production Grant, Children of Light follows a 16-year-old Korean boy in the 1960s who has been kidnapped and placed at a juvenile center on a remote island. After he is assaulted, he must escape with his rival to survive.

Hasta Encontrarlos (“Till We Find Them”) was named a finalist in the Documentary category. The film is a short-form documentary produced by Creative Producing student Jean Chapiro (JRN '22) that depicts the tireless search of the Orizaba and Córdoba families to find their missing loved ones in Mexico.

The winners will be revealed at the 2023 Academy Awards later this fall.

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Original: July 26, 2023

Two films from Columbia filmmakers have been named semifinalists for the 2023 Student Academy Awards. They are: Children of Light and Till We Find Them.

Established in 1972, the Student Academy Awards is an international student film competition. Each year, college and university film students from all over the world compete for awards and cash grants, with films being judged in several categories. Past Student Academy Award winners have gone on to win 12 Oscars and receive 63 Oscar nominations.

Children of Light, nominated in the Narrative category, was written, directed, and edited by Minkyu Kang ’22. Kang produced the film alongside Bofan Zhang ’21. Set in the 1960s, Children of Light follows a 16-year-old Korean boy who was kidnapped and assaulted at a juvenile center on a remote island, and must escape with his rival to survive.

Supported by a Katharina Otto-Bernstein ’92 (’86 CC) Production Grant, Children of Light is based on a true story from the 1950s and 60s which has had haunting repercussions in contemporary South Korea. In the years after World War II, the Korean Military Government opened operations at a place called “Seongnam Academy.” Presumably a reform academy for wayward boys, Seongnam was in actuality a forced labor camp, exploiting children who were taken off the street in order to revitalize the flagging economy. Though the characters in the movie are all fictional, Kang says he was inspired by Seongnam Academy and other detention centers.

Hasta Encontrarlos (Till We Find Them) is a short-form documentary produced by Creative Producing student Jean Chapiro (JRN ’22). The film depicts the tireless search of the Orizaba and Córdoba families to find their missing loved ones in Mexico. Since 1964 almost 250,000 people have disappeared in Mexico, and over 100,000 have not been found. Thousands of people across the country are still looking for their loved ones, especially mothers who will not rest until they find their children. 

The documentary highlights Araceli Salcedo who, three years after her daughter Rubi went missing in Orizaba, Veracruz, Mexico, decided to start a collective in her own community. Today there are over 350 members in the group, and 90% of them are mothers. Together, they have successfully found 15 people alive, returned 71 bodies, and spotted 53 clandestine graves in the past year. However, most of these women have not found their children. One of the coping and healing mechanisms that Salcedo created for the mothers in her collective are muñecos sanadores or “healing dolls.” The dolls represent missing children and serve as a tool to help the mothers navigate the void that their loved ones left behind.

Chapiro produced the film as a 2022 Post-Graduate Reporting Fellow at the Columbia Journalism School, where she received a Reporting Grant in support of her work on the project. You can watch a trailer for the documentary here.

The finalists for the 2023 Student Academy Awards will be named later this fall.