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2023 Iowa Independent
Film Festival | September 7-9
Mason City & Clear Lake, Iowa
2019 Award Winners
Best Feature Film:
SILO
Director: Marshall Burnette
A rare accident threatens to tear apart family and friends in a small American farm town.
Best Documentary Film:
Decoding the Driftless
Director: Jonas Stenstrom
A wild ride of adventure through the air, across rugged landscapes, on and under the water, through a secret underworld, and across time itself to explore and decipher ancient clues of archaeology, paleontology, geology, and biology of the Driftless Region, with its captivating scenic beauty.
Best Short Film:
The Tattooed Heart
Director: Sheldon Wong Schwartz
A creative writing instructor (Jennifer Morrison, "Once Upon a Time") at a juvenile detention center finds common ground with a troubled student (Madison Wolfe, "I Kill Giants") yet quickly finds herself in great danger when she decides to help her.
Best Women Filmmaker Film:
Found in Korea
Director: Allison Lane, Kevyn Settle & Nam Holtz
A Korean adoptee travels back to Korea for the first time in 35 years in search of her birth parents and the world she lost as a baby. While retracing the steps of her own adoption, she discovers her culture, identity and questions why Korean's are not adopting their own.
Best Foreign Film:
The Update
Director: Mor Hanay
Country of Origin: Israel
Adam has the perfect girlfriend, Alex, which was custom-made for him. Alex is separated from him for 24 hours during the annual 'Update Day' and he finds himself spending the time with Yuli, a human being like him, she makes him question everything he thought was perfect.
Pride of Iowa Film:
SILO
Director: Marshall Burnette
A rare accident threatens to tear apart family and friends in a small American farm town.
Best Student Film:
Self Defense
Director: Zach Bradley
Two sisters stuck in the woods with a flat tire must find a way to defend themselves from two men who approach them with nefarious intentions.
Best Local Film:
A February Canoe Float
Director: Bruce McKee
Dale has solo-paddled the Winnebago River in every month of every year for decades. This is one of his Winter canoe floats, narrated with his prose and observations of his passion of paddling and nature around him.
Critic's Choice:
Gallery Experience
Directed by:
Jinghan Tian
The girl had a magical experience by visiting the gallery with her dad for the first time.
Danny & May
Directed by:
Andrew Moodie
When Danny is given an uncertain diagnosis, May is forced to consider life without him.
Black Flowers
Directed by:
Martin Gooch
In a post apocalyptic world one family fights for survival.
Fairy Tail
Directed by: Justin & Kristin Schaack
A hopeless romantic discovers an unlikely intruder and finds love at first fight.
The Land
Directed by: Stephen Wallace Pruitt
Sixty-something farming couple John and Mary Lou Martin come face-to-face with mistakes from their pasts and an uncertain future as they strive to hold onto the only life they've ever known.
"RADIO MOON"
Bella
Cultivation: Writing
and Wrestling in Iowa City
Premonition
Gridshock
Directed by:
Pierre GAFFIÉ
Sibyl works as a radio host during the night. Though she knows how to appease her listeners' sufferings, her own personal life is in turmoil and she's decided to leave Luke. But the desperate call from Michel, a very sad listener, make her change her mind...
Directed by: Seth D. Myers & Sarah Stolar
A young dancer is troubled by her own shadow self as she journeys through physical and psychological landscapes.
Directed by:
Nathan McNurlen
In April 2018, Iowa City hosted two every different international events in the same week. Cultivation explores what makes Iowa City the center of the writing and wrestling universes and how the two arts are similar.
Directed by: Leticia Akel Escarate
Javier arrives in a small town looking for a job. In this place he faces a farming community led by Chivo, a stubborn man who doesn’t trust him and won’t allow him to work with them. Guided by strange dreams that haunt him by night, Javier will fight against Chivo’s prejudices to win his place in the community.
Directed by:
Jinghan Tian
Gridshock is a investigative documentary exposing the hidden and disturbing reality behind the sex trafficking demand in Iowa.
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