2019 Award Winning Films

Greenwich International Film Festival is proud to announce the 2019 GIFF Award Winning Films.  

BEST SOCIAL IMPACT FILM

Afterward

Directed By: Ofra Bloch
Run Time: 95 mins
Category: Documentary Feature

Ofra Bloch, a New York-based psychoanalyst specializing in trauma, was born in Jerusalem to a Jewish family that emigrated to Palestine in the 1920s. Disturbed by the resurgence of fascism and anti-Semitism around the world, Ofra travels to Germany, Israel, and Palestine to confront her own deep-seeded feelings about Germans and Palestinians, and the tensions between the Holocaust and the Nakba. In the process, she explores the nature of resistance and the possibility of hope.

BEST NARRATIVE FEATURE FILM

SISTER AIMEE

Directed By: Samantha Buck and Marie Schlingmann
Run Time: 87 mins
Category: Narrative Feature

In 1926 America’s most famous evangelist is a woman. And she’s looking for a way out. Fed up with her own success, she gets swept up in her lover’s daydreams about Mexico and finds herself on a wild road trip towards the border. Based on true events. Mostly made up.

BEST DOCUMENTARY FEATURE

Cold Case Hammarskjöld

Directed By: Mads Brügger
Run Time: 128 mins
Category: Documentary Feature

Danish director Mads Brügger and Swedish private investigator Göran Björkdahl are trying to solve the mysterious death of Dag Hammarskjöld. As their investigation closes in, they discover a crime far worse than killing the Secretary-General of the United Nations.

BEST NARRATIVE SHORT FILM

THE ANIMAL

Directed By: Sebastian Kass

Siri, 15, receives a call from child protection services who have heard that she might be facing problems in her family. Alone and flanked by an unmanageable big brother, Siri, guided by a stubborn love, rebels against the community, the child protection services and the animal lurking deep inside her.

BEST DOCUMENTARY SHORT FILM

MACK WRESTLES

Directed By: Erin Sanger and Taylor Hess
Run Time: 25 mins

The sport is brutal enough. There are the demands for strength and speed and stamina, the hours bathed in sweat, the knowledge that your opponent wants to wipe the mat with you. Despite all the turmoil, this poignant film makes one thing perfectly clear: If life were a wrestling match, the referee would be raising Mack’s arm at the end.

BEST CONNECTICUT SHORT FILM

120 YEARS

Directed By: Matt Nadel and Lukas Cox

Scott Lewis, a citizen of New Haven, Connecticut, was sentenced to life in prison for a crime he never committed. This story traces the ramifications of his wrongful conviction on a family that lost 20 precious years together, on a community shaken by corruption, and on an exonerated man desperately making up for lost time.

Past Winners

Audience Award

  • 2020 – “A Peloton of One”

Best Social Impact Film

  • 2021: “Through the Night”
  • 2020 – “Music Got Me Here”
  • 2019 – “Afterward”
  • 2018 – “Crime + Punishment”
  • 2017 – “City of Ghosts”
  • 2016 – “Hooligan Sparrow”
  • 2015 – “3 ½ Minutes, Ten Bullets”

Best CT Short

  • 2020 – “The Other Side”
  • 2019 – “120 Years”
  • 2018 – “The Hammamis”
  • 2017 – “Blind Sushi”

Honorable Mentions

  • 2021:”The Boy From Medellin”
  • 2021: “There is No Evil”

Best Documentary Feature

  • 2019 – Cold Case Hammarskjöld
  • 2018 – “The Dawn Wall”
  • 2017 – “Bending the Arc”
  • 2016 – “Hooligan Sparrow”
  • 2015 – “The Russian Woodpecker”

Best Narrative Feature

  • 2019 – “Sister Aimee”
  • 2018 – “The Peculiar Abilities of Mr. Mahler”
  • 2017 – “The Strange Ones”
  • 2016 – “Little Men”
  • 2015 – “Zurich”

Best Documentary Short

  • 2019 – “Mack Wrestles”
  • 2018 – “Kayayo”
  • 2017 – “The Rabbit Hunt”
  • 2016 – “Another Kind of Girl”
  • 2015 – “Santa Cruz del Islote”

Best Narrative Short

  • 2019 – “The Animal”
  • 2018 – “The Peculiar Abilities of Mr. Mahler”
  • 2017 – “Under Pressure”
  • 2016 – “Before the Bomb”
  • 2015 – “Grounded”
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