The results are in for the YouTube-sponsored Your Film Festival. Two American and two Australian filmmakers, along with others from six other countries have won a trip to the Venice Film Festival for a chance to win $500,000 and the priceless tutelage of some Hollywood elite.
March 31st was the deadline for submissions to the contest. When YouTube announced Your Film Festival, they said that is was a free-entry, free-form contest. That meant that submission from filmmakers could take one of any formats – short film, web-series episode, TV pilot – whatever. Voting took place in June, and the list of 50 finalists was cut to 10. Those ten will now compete for the grand prize in Venice.
According to the YouTube blog, over 3 million people voted for the Your Film Festival finalists, and they selected these ten entries:
- 88:88, Joey Ciccoline & Sean Wilson (USA)
- Bat Eyes, Damien Power (Australia)
- Cine Rincao, Fernando Grostein Andrade & Fernanda Fernandes (Brazil)
- The Drought, Kevin Slack (USA)
- El General, Diego Pino Zamora (Bolivia)
- The Guilt, David Victori Blaya (Spain)
- North Atlantic, Bernardo Nascimento (United Kingdom)
- Super.Full., Niam Itani (Lebanon)
- Scruples, Adrian Powers (Australia)
- This Time, Ramy EL-Gabry (Egypt)
These finalists’ trip to Venice will include a pitch to director Ridley Scott, and the panel of judges will include actor Michael Fassbender. The grand prize winner will not only receive half a million dollars for future projects, but will get to work on that new project with Fassbender and Scott.
You can check out the finalists here. All of the films are under 15 minutes.