Film with powerful message wins top award
The winner of a prestigious film award was announced at the Filmbath Festival.
African-american filmmaker Mali Crosby won the 11th annual IMDB New Filmmaker Award for the short film, Prey.
Prey tells the harrowing story of a high school sexual assault, using the visual metaphor of white painted handprints on a young person’s body and building up to a heartbreaking conclusion.
“Never in my wildest dreams would I have imagined that my film would reach such a wide audience,” said Mali.
“I hope that it provides other sexual assault survivors with some comfort, and inspires them to find what makes them feel powerful. You are strong, you are beautiful, and your trauma does not define you.”
The annual prize-giving celebrates emerging talent and is open to anyone who has a short film between 1 and 10 minutes and with no previous distribution.
The prestigious award carries a £1,000 prize towards the filmmaker’s next production and £1,000 of equipment hire from Visual Impact.
It celebrates emerging talent from across the world and is open to anyone who has a short film between 1 and 10 minutes and with no previous distribution.
Also shortlisted were Luis Suarez Bracho with Dilemma, Alba Fernandez with The Essay, Cobra Collins with Hop Along Hang On and Jana Devino with No Heartbeat.
The awards were hosted by awardwinning BBC Radio Bristol host Laura Rawlings and the judges were IMDB CEO Col Needham, Neil Ramjee from BFI Filmhub SW, filmmaker Saskia Duff, actor Jonathan Hyde and Sophie Francis, film lecturer at Bath Spa University.
The 32nd annual Filmbath Festival ran at venues across the city.
Filmbath Festival pioneered the F-rating, an initiative ensuring festivals and cinemas showcased their female filmmaking talent, and over 50% of the films at this year’s festival were directed by women.
The festival says its mission is to champion and showcase diversity on
I hope it provides other sexual assault survivors with some comfort, and inspires them to find what makes them feel powerful. Mali Crosby
screen and behind the camera to as widely inclusive an audience as possible, and to inspire exhibitors to programme more diverse films both in the UK and beyond.
Their Filmclub runs monthly screenings of festival-type films at Walcot House, and their pop-up screenings show a range of special events and popular films in brilliant locations.