Fantastic Fest 2011: Awards Go to BULLHEAD, A BOY AND HIS SAMURAI, CLOWN

This year's top award-winners include Michael R. Roskam's superb drama Bullhead, Mikkel Nørgaard's side-splitting comedy Clown, and Yoshihiro Nakamura's gentle and sweet A Boy and His Samurai.

You can follow our Twitter feed for the play-by-play provided by Ryland Aldrich and James Marsh, live from the awards show. 

The press release follows.

FANTASTIC FEST 2011 ANNOUNCES THE FANTASTIC FEST AWARDS

Austin, TX--- Monday, September 26, 2011---Fantastic Fest is excited to announce this year's Fantastic Fest Award winners. Fantastic Fest 2011 brought us a time travelling samurai, a supernatural hallway in the woods, a deadly family reunion, and rampaging Cuban zombies. Picking favorites from this year's line up was a formidable task to say the least, but our esteemed team of jurors have done the nearly impossible and chosen the best and most visionary films of the festival.

The juries were comprised of some of the most esteemed filmmakers, critics, festival directors and show biz people in the industry. Their thoughtful deliberations provided the following acknowledgments of cinematic excellence in all things Fantastic.

The audience awards are presented by accounting firm Maxwell Locke & Ritter (www.mlrpc.com), who provided the certified tabulation of ballots this year and are the exclusive accounting sponsor of Fantastic Fest. AMD and Dell are the presenters of prestigious "Next Wave" Awards, which honor emerging filmmakers. The winner of the "Next Wave" feature award is presented with $1,000 and a Dell (www.alienware.com) multimedia laptop provided by AMD (www.amd.com). The Fantastic Fest Awards ceremony is also presented by the Texas Motion Picture Alliance (www.txmpa.org), who advocate for film, video, commercial, interactive, and digital media production inside the state of Texas.

AUDIENCE AWARD (Presented by Maxwell Locke & Ritter)

A Boy And His Samurai (Yoshihiro Nakamura)

Runners Up: You're Next, Juan Of The Dead

AMD & DELL "NEXT WAVE" SPOTLIGHT COMPETITION

Best Picture - Bullhead

Best Director - Michael R. Roskam (Bullhead)

Best Screenplay - Josh MacDonald (The Corridor)

Best Actor - Matthias Schoenaerts (Bullhead)

Best Actress - Jessica Cole (Aardvark)

Special Jury Award for Boldness Of Vision: Beyond The Black Rainbow

HORROR FEATURES

Best Picture - You're Next

Best Director - Adam Wingard (You're Next)

Best Screenplay - Simon Barrett (You're Next)

Best Actor - Sean Harris (A Lonely Place To Die)

Best Actress - Sharni Vinson (You're Next)

FANTASTIC FEATURES

Best Picture - Milocrorze: A Love Story

Best Director - Noboru Iguchi (Karate Robo Zaborgar)

Best Screenplay - Olafur Egilsson, Grimur Haonarson (Summerland)

Best Actor - Julián Villagrán (Extraterrestrial)

Best Actress - Sawa Masaki (Underwater Love)

GUTBUSTER COMEDY FEATURES

Best Picture - Clown

Best Director - Steffen Haars, Flip Van Der Kuil (New Kids Turbo)

Best Screenplay - Casper Christensen, Frank Hvam (Clown)

SHORT FUSE: HORROR SHORTS

Winner: How To Rid Your Lover Of A Negative Emotion Caused By You (Nadia Litz)

Runner-up: The Unliving (Hugo Lilj)

Special Jury Award for Outstanding Achievement in Special Effects and General Badassery: Brutal Relax (David Muñoz, Rafa Dengrá, Adrián Cardona)

FANTASTIC SHORTS

Best Fantastic Short: Decapoda Shock (Javier Chillón)

Runner-up: All Men Are Called Robert (Marc-Henri Boulier)

Special Jury Mention for Acting: Robert Picardo (The Candidate)

DRAWN AND QUARTERED: ANIMATED SHORTS

Best Animated Short: Last Norwegian Troll (Pjotr Sapegin)

Runner-up: Lazarov (NIETOV)