PiFan Award Winners Announced!

Though festival screenings will continue for a couple more days last night marked the last film to premiere at the 2009 edition of PiFan and, along with that, the official awards selection and distribution of awards. And it's pretty safe to say that closing night belonged to Indonesia with both Indonesian films playing in competition picking up awards while the festival's third and final film from Indonesia - Merantau - closed things off to a hugely positive audience response. I'll start with the short film winners, since that was the jury I was on.

Richard Gale's The Horribly Slow Murderer With The Extremely Inefficient Weapon was the big winner in the shorts competition, taking both the Citizen's Choice Award and the jury-awarded Best Short prize. And he accepted both wins with passably good Korean, too. Taking home Best Korean Short was Jung Yu Mi's stellar animated short film Dust Kid, which should come as no surprise sine she had also received a special mention in the Best Short category. And the final prize - the Jury Award - went to Pedro Pires' Danse Macabre.

In the feature categories, Korean rock-doc Turn It Up To 11 won the Fujifilm Eterna Award while Japanese hip hop film 8000 Miles took the Netpac Award, making the music films two for two on the night. And Prachya Pinkaew's Chocolate took the EFFF Asian Film Award, wrapping up the sidebar prizes. In the official Puchon Choice Competition, zero budget zombie anthology The Neighbor Zombie took both the Citizen Award and the Jury's Choice and were - to put it mildly - rather surprised and excited by both prizes. They film makers shouts could be heard echoing through the nearby streets for most of the night. Best Actress went to Shareefa Daanish for Macabre while Best Actor went to Pontypool's Stephen McHattie - a very well deserved win, that - with Nick Cheung - who was in the house and very friendly - getting a special mention for Beast Stalker. Speaking of which, Dante Lam's Beast Stalker would go on to win Best Director with Best Film going to Joko Anwar's The Forbidden Door.