NEXTWAVE HONOUREES ANNOUNCED AT SWIFF GALA CEREMONY

The culmination of a year-long search for Australia’s freshest filmmaking minds unfolded yesterday at the Screenwave International Film Festival (SWIFF), with the award ceremony for the Nextwave Youth Film Festival taking place in the heart of Coffs Harbour, hosted by actor and Toormina High alumni, Nick Hardcastle.

Drawn from over 60 short films submitted by regional student filmmakers aged 10-25, a final roster of 22 finalists were screened at the C.Ex Auditorium for the nominees and their families, as well as representatives from the primary, secondary and tertiary institutions in the running for the highly-coveted trophies. (Pictured, above; a still from Nextwave finalist What's Next, directed by Francoise Dik) 

In the 10-14 age bracket, Best Film honours went to The Beach, a eerie, monochromatic moodpiece directed by and starring Lachlan Beck and Michaela Forbes and produced at St Columba Anglican College, Port Macquarie. Honours in the 15-17 years category went to Brain Storm, a meta-rich take on the filmmaking process, which took out Best Film and Best Script trophies for creatives Ben Rosenberg and Lawson Booth of Toowoomba Grammar School. In the 18-25 groups, the home invasion thriller Come Downstairs (pictured, right), directed by Brayden Cureton of Toowoomba Christian College, earned the Best Film nod.

The People’s Choice award, voted for by those attending the screening ceremony, went to the joyous celebration of seaside teen life, The Perfect Day in Isolation, directed by Jonah Werner and Toby Hill out of Macksville High School. The coastal odyssey also earned a SWIFF Commendation, as did director Sophie Bagstar of Oxley High School for her dramatic supernatural thriller, Devour.   

In other key categories, the Matrix-like actioner Rural Quest (pictured, right), produced by the trio of William Butler, Jack Morgan and Dylan Mann of St Paul’s College Kempsey, scored Best Cinematography and Best Editing gongs; Kaelyn Ward won Best Director for her haunted-home mystery, The Switch; Best Actor honours went to Felix Kneebone for Willow Driver’s man-child comedy, I Don’t Want to Play Anymore; and, Aaron Bruggeman won Best Sound for his workplace fantasy, Day Dreamer.

The Young Regional Filmmaker Award is one of the most sought-after Nextwave honours, recognised throughout the film industry as a key stepping-stone towards sector acceptance. In 2020, that honour went to Rylee Parry, an 18-25 category nominee, for her directorial effort Remember The Waltzing, Matilda. Runner-up in the category was Jordan Frith, represented by the dreamlike drama, Feeling Lost.

In 2020, the Nextwave mentoring and training program shifted from in-person workshops to a dedicated online film education portal, hosted at nextwavefilm.com.au. The 2021 competition was officially opened by SWIFF Festival Directors Kate Howat and Dave Horsley, with the competition once again to be overseen by Program Director Saige Brown. Heads up, filmmakers - this year’s condition-of-entry component is ‘pineapple’, dictating the tropical fruit or some variation thereof must appear in your submission.

In a first for the Nextwave finalists, it was announced that 11 films, each exhibiting a key genre thematic element - sci-fi, horror, thriller or fantasy - would be granted automatic entry into the 2021 Sydney Science Fiction Film Festival. A full list of the films selected to screen November 4-13 in Sydney can be found at the festival's Facebook page here.