Brooklyn Film Festival’s 23rd edition streams online amid pandemic

June 10, 2020 Editorial Staff

A collage of "virtual" red carpet photos submitted by BFF 2020 filmmakers. Photo courtesy of Brooklyn Film Festival

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Brooklyn Film Festival’s 23rd edition: TURNING POINT, which in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic streamed its films for free from Friday to Sunday, has announced the winners of its annual awards.

The Festival bestowed a total of 30 awards to this year’s festival filmmakers.

Winners were determined by three groups: the external panels of judges, the festival, and the audience.

Through the resources of industry-related sponsors, selected filmmakers are sharing a total of $50,000 in cash, products and services.

Over the course of the 10-day Festival, there were a total of more than 21,000 new registered users and over 36,000 views of the films, as data collected from Vimeo, the festival’s video server, showed.

More information about the BFF selection process and a full awards breakdown may be found here.

“Into the Storm,” directed by Adam Brown, picked up the coveted best of fest Grand Chameleon Award. Jeanne Leblanc’s “Our Own” won Best Narrative Feature and Adam Brown’s “Into the Storm” also took home the award for Best Documentary Feature.

The event featured many works by Brooklyn-based filmmakers. Narrative short “Summer in the City” by director Mojo Lorwin won in the category of Best Brooklyn Project. Morgan Ingari’s narrative feature “Milkwater” won a Certificate of Achievement for Outstanding Screenplay.

“The 2020 BFF has been for me, without a doubt, the most important event up to date organized by the Brooklyn Film Festival,” said Brooklyn Film Festival Executive Director Marco Ursino. “124 countries have been following the festival in numbers that we could have only dreamt about in the past. I have the clear feeling that BFF has entered a brand new stage and the greatest thing of all is that we have achieved this by doing something tangibly good.

“We envisioned, created, and then delivered a well-organized film festival to people who are going through a very difficult moment in their lives,” he continued. “And the idea to offer such a show free of charge has been one of the most rewarding actions I have ever been involved in.”

On Sunday night, Brooklyn Film Festival ended the event with a closing night party on Zoom.

Award packages included prizes from Sobre Vista Resort, AbelCine, Xeno Lights, Be Electric, WNET, MPE, Final Draft, Lentini Communications, Media Services, Noble Jewelry, The Pod Hotel, Papapietro Perry Winery and Brooklyn Film Society.