Congrats to our AFF winners!
The 27th Atlantic Film Festival announced its list of awards on Friday and ACTRA Maritimes members walked away with a lot of the hardware.
Congratulations to Chaz Thorne for taking the award for Best Director for Just Buried, his “dead-on” comedy set in rural Nova Scotia. He also shared The Michael Weir Award for best original screenplay with Clement Virgo for Poor Boy’s Game. The Halifax-based boxing and race-relations drama, directed by Virgo, also garnered the prize for Atlantic feature.
And our own Ellen Page took the Best Actress Award for her work in Bruce McDonald’s The Tracey Fragments (which also won best Canadian feature.) Look for her in the upcoming Juno, which was the talk of the Toronto International Film Festival.
Montreal member Roy Dupuis won best actor for his portrayal of Lt.-Gen. Roméo Dallaire in Halifax Film’s Shake Hands With The Devil.
The winner of this year’s Inspired Script program, presented by Telefilm Canada and Astral Media The Harold Greenberg Fund, was Maritimes member Drew Hagen, for his pitch Pot of Gold, about two friends who leave Nova Scotia for the Alberta oil fields, but don’t find their dreams of wealth coming true. Hagen’s feature treatment was chosen to receive up to $10,000 in development money from the sponsors, and with help from a veteran story editor, he will be presenting the first draft of that script at next year’s Script Out Loud program during the 28th AFF.
Hagen was at this year’s festival having produced the short film Eastern Shore, created as part of the NSI Drama Prize and directed by his partner Eva Madden, who won the Inspired Script program last year with her feature treatment Sweet Nothing. A dynasty in the making!
Congratulations to you all!
