Angelus Student Film Festival selects 22 finalists

August 12, 2008

The 2008 Angelus Student Film Festival has selected 22 finalists in three categories - live action, animation and documentary - from 470 entries, representing 132 film schools in nearly two dozen countries, including Iceland, Bulgaria and Egypt. Family Theater Productions conducts the annual festival, which it created in 1996, and serves as its principal patron along with its sponsoring organization Holy Cross Family Ministries, Easton, Mass. The festival seeks to cultivate, honor and showcase future filmmakers as they explore and create works that respect the dignity of the human person.

The 2008 finalists represent film schools in Germany, France, Australia, Toronto, Canada and the United States, including Harvard, Columbia and New York universities, USC, UCLA, American Film Institute and Stanford University. Click on www.angelus.org/winners-current.html for a list of all the finalists, their films and film schools. Fr. Willy Raymond, CSC, who sits on all three Angelus juries, said the finalist films this year as a group are the richest in quality that I have seen in the nine years I have been involved with Angelus and Family Theater Productions."

Moreno, Director of the Angelus Student Film Festival, concurred. "The quality and breadth of vision represented by the finalists' films this year are unparalleled. As diverse as the submissions are, they embody the Angelus hallmark of moving, uplifting, redemptive and compassionate themes that resonate with a universal audience."

The 2008 winners are being selected from the 22 finalists by juries comprised of film industry professionals from the fields of live action, documentary and animation. This year the documentaries were judged at HBO in New York by an all-star panel of documentary producers and directors:
- Sara Bernstein, HBO's Director of Documentary Programming.
- Michael Kaufman, Vice President of Development and Production for Al Roker Entertainment.
- Doug Block, a New York-based director, producer and cameraman whose work includes some of the most acclaimed feature documentaries of the past 15 years.
- Geof Bartz, supervising editor for HBO and an award-winning editor or supervisory editor of more than 100 films. His films have won two Academy Awards and four Primetime Emmys.
- John and Ed Priddy, founders of Priddy Brothers, which develops, produces and distributes independent films that explore with respect, grace and artistry the depth and breadth of the human experience.
- Hilla Medalia, whose documentary film To Die In Jerusalem, recently received three Emmy nominations and earned a Peabody Award. She also won the 2004 Angelus Student Film Festival Outstanding Documentary Award for Daughters of Abraham.
- Alison Thompson, whose documentary The Third Wave, about the 2004 tsunami in Sri Lanka, had a "red-carpet" screening at the 2008 Cannes Film Festival.
- Fr. Raymond, CSC, National Director, Family Theater Productions, which has produced several documentaries that have aired on public television.

New jurors judging the live action category included:
- Bobette Buster, an award-winning screenwriter, whose screen credits for production and story development include HBO's first Best Film of the Year Emmy for Barbarians at the Gate, Weapons of Mass Distraction and Revenge.
- Nick Creature, a Writers' Guild of America accredited screenwriter who has worked for Sony Pictures, Vivendi-Universal, Viacom, MTV, and many other studios/production companies.  
- Holly Book of the Peter Glenville Foundation, a major Angelus sponsor.

The winning films will be screened and nearly $50,000 in cash and prizes will be presented to the winners and finalists at the Angelus Student Film Festival at 5:30 p.m., Saturday, September 13, at the Directors Guild of America, Hollywood. The grand prize is the $10,000 Excellence in Filmmaking Award presented in honor of Father Patrick Peyton, CSC, Family Theater Productions' founder.