The Sioux City International Film Festival has selected the following 2021 winners:
Best Drama: THE LETTER ROOM. Directed by Elvira Lind and starring Oscar Isaac, this film was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Live Action Short Film.
The film tells the story ofa kind-hearted prison officer (Isaac) who is transferred to the letter room and gets involved in an
inmate’s personal affairs.
Best Documentary: NANDO. Directed by Alex Cutter, this film is told through the context of a poem and is about a young boy in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil who dreams to see beyond the harsh
realities that surround him.
Best Comedy: OUT OF STOCK. Directed by Bryan Taira. In 1972, the host of The Tonight Show, Johnny Carson, made a joke that toilet paper was going out of stock. By the next day, stores across the country were sold out. This is the story of the first day of the toilet paper crisis.
Best Sci-Fi/Fantasy: SYMFAUNIC. Directed by Erin Bergin and Darby Kate Snyder.
This film was created by a group of character animation undergraduate students at the University of Central Florida and is about a young faun who challenges the harmony of her forest glade when her new taste in music clashes with her brother’s teachings.
Best Horror: THE DESECRATED. Directed by John Gray, a New York based writer-director who created the long running hit CBS series, GHOST WHISPERER.
The film THE DESECRATED is about a young morgue attendant working the night shift who encounters an unwelcome visitor.
Audience Choice Local Films: THE SERVAIS TWINS. Directed by Hunter Foster, this documentary follows the lives of twins, one who has a fixation on nature and psychedelics and the other, an unwavering love to God.
The schism has formed between the two, but is it too late
to bridge the divide?
Audience Choice All Films: THE LETTER ROOM.
Best of the Fest: FEELING THROUGH. Directed by Doug Roland and executive produced by Oscar winner Marlee Matlin; this is the first film to star a DeafBlind actor.
This film, which is a coming of age story that follows Tereek, a teen wandering through the streets of New York, desperate for a place to crash when he encounters Arie, a DeafBlind man in need of getting home.
From an awkward meeting between strangers
emerges an intimate bond and a journey that forever changes Tereek.
