Mountain Shadow’s 5th ANNUAL SHORT FILM COMPETITION

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As a non-profit film society, part of Mountain Shadow’s vision is to foster and support great independent filmmaking. Since creating this annual event five years ago, this short film competition has been unique; charging no submission fee for emerging film artists, but requiring Finalists to present their works in person, if selected.

In addition, this year we made every Finalist an equal “winner,” awarding every filmmaker a guaranteed $500 cash prize. Audience ballots only determined “Laurels” for 1st, 2nd and 3rd Place winners. This has made our short film competition a truly collaborative effort between the filmmaking community and our film society!

This year’s volunteer Jury, consisting of 24 Mountain Shadow member-volunteers, previewed a whopping 625 submissions; in order to select our 11 Finalists from far and wide, who came from all over the country to present their works in person.

These outstanding short films include live-action / narratives, documentaries, and animated shorts. At the conclusion of Saturday night's screening the "Laurels" winners were announced. All eleven Finalists were deemed "winners," receiving a $500 cash award. "Laurels" as determined by over 500 ballots collected from our three shows were as follows:

1st Place Laurels: Clayton Kruse, "Car Treble"
2nd Place Laurels: Yasmin Mistry, "For a Better Life"
3rd Place Laurels: Samantha Sylvers, "The Tree"

Finalist Laurels were awarded to the remaining eight filmmakers:

Cain Pickens, for "Love at First Light"
Penny Pauletich, for "20 Seconds"
Paul Kirby, for "Lodestar"
Joe Chen, for "The Mother"
Caitlin Lish, for "BYOH - Bring Your Own Hitman"
Sean Kim, for "Misguided"
David Maire, for "The Hobbyist"
Jeffrey Ashkin, for "The Credits Movie"

All the filmmakers were astounded by our receptive audiences, and thrilled to have the opportunity to share their work with so many. It's why Mountain Shadow is passionate about supporting independent filmmaking! 

The compilation DVD of all eleven films are available in our Member Lending Library. In addition, you can watch our terrific video of the filmmaker Q&A and Award Presentation HERE.