U.S. INDIE LANDLOCKED EARNS TOP JURY HONOURS AT 2022 SYDNEY SCIENCE FICTION FILM FESTIVAL; CANADIAN CLI-FI POLARIS TAKES AUDIENCE AWARD, BEST ACTRESS GONGS.
Having featured heavily amongst the most buzzed-about titles at a raft of recent U.S. genre festivals, director Paul E. Owens’ dark, gripping contemporary fantasy Landlocked has emerged as the winner of The Ron Cobb Best Feature Film at this year’s Sydney Science Fiction Film Festival.
From left - Best Film winner Landlocked; Best Actor Andrew Riddell, in Sight Extended; Best Actress Viva Lee in Polaris; and, Best Director Iuli Gerbase, for The Pink Cloud
A vivid dissection of memory, nostalgia and family legacy, the visionary work interweaves real-life 30 year old family video footage with a fictional account of a young man (played by the director’s son, Mason) coming to terms with the demolition of his childhood home.
The Audience Award at the third annual staging of Australia’s largest speculative storytelling showcase was given to Kirsten Carthew’s complex, ethereal, often brutal dystopian vision, Polaris. Shot in Canada’s Yukon wilderness, it also earned a Best Actress (Feature) award for teenage star and expat Australian, Viva Lee, who was only 11 at the time of the arduous shoot.
The film also took out a third honour – a Career Achievement award for animal actor Agee, the beloved polar bear who features alongside Lee as ‘Mother’ and who was retired from performing when the Polaris production wrapped, after two decades in the business.
Other feature film honours went to Best Actor Andrew Riddell for his depiction of the agoraphobic whose world opens up with the application of ocular gaming technology in Sight Extended, from co-directors Daniel Lazo and Eran Mar-Raz; Best Director winner Iuli Gerbase for the haunting and deeply prescient lockdown Brazilian drama, The Pink Cloud; and Derick Muller’s Wesens, a found-footage account of a group of academics encountering a downed alien object in the wilds of 1967 South Africa, which earned a Special Jury Prize for Innovation and Originality.
The full list of winners and nominees in the Feature Film categories are:
THE RON COBB BEST FEATURE FILM:
LANDLOCKED **WINNER** (Producer: Paul Owens)
WESENS; THE PINK CLOUD; POLARIS; NEPTUNE FROST; SIGHT EXTENDED
SPECIAL JURY PRIZE for Innovation and Originality
WESENS (Producers: Derick Muller, Karin Muller)
AUDIENCE AWARD:
POLARIS (Producers: Paul Cadieux, Kirsten Carthew, Max Fraser, Alyson Richards)
CAREER ACHIEVEMENT AWARD:
AGEE (Polar Bear Actor – POLARIS): Born 3 January 1995 in Sweden’s Kolmården Wildlife Park, the 26-year-old bear is the only trained polar bear in North America,; her film credits include Alaska (1996), The Journey Home (2014), Operation Arctic (2014) and Arctic (2018), opposite Mads Mikkelsen. She will live in the Leatherdale International Polar Bear Conservation Centre in Winnipeg.
BEST ACTOR Feature Film:
Andrew Riddell for SIGHT EXTENDED **WINNER**; Mason Owens for LANDLOCKED; Braxton Hale for THE ALIEN PROJECT; Elvis Ngabo for NEPTUNE FROST; Pietie Beyers for WESENS; Dean Kirkright for THE GREEN WOMAN
BEST ACTRESS Feature Film:
Viva Lee for POLARIS **WINNER**; Renata de Lélis for THE PINK CLOUD; Christine Husband for THE GREEN WOMAN; Khamisa Wilsher for POLARIS; Madyn Rae for DOME HOUSE SIX; Cheryl Isheja for NEPTUNE FROST
BEST DIRECTOR Feature Film:
Iuli Gerbase for THE PINK CLOUD **WINNER**; Kirsten Carthew for POLARIS; Paul E. Owens for LANDLOCKED; Patrick Donnelly for THE ALIEN PROJECT; Anisia Uzeyman, Saul Williams for NEPTUNE FROST; Derek Muller for WESENS