2023 TFF Award Winners Announced

About Raymond Knudsen

Raymond Knudsen is a Filipino-American writer, director and producer who founded Big Blue Pictures in 2020. Knudsen has produced multiple short films including Weapons and Their Names (Sundance, Palm Springs ShortFest) and Monkey Bars (NoBudge, NFFTY).

As a director, Knudsen aims to tell slice of life stories within the worlds of bodybuilding, American football and dysfunctional families that remind people they are not alone. His latest short film, Prep, premiered in 2023 and screened at the Tallahassee Film Festival in September. Knudsen is a graduate from the FSU College of Motion Picture Arts.

Prep is a portrait of all that can simultaneously build and destroy us; an expression of the traumas we attempt to evade and the loneliness that accompanies many when striving to push our limits. […] I feel a responsibility to remind these modern-day gladiators to breathe; you’re not alone.

– Raymond Knudsen

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About Elizabeth Mirzaei

Elizabeth Mirzaei is a director and cinematographer of nonfiction films. Her short film Three Songs for Benazir won a Cinema Eye Honors Award, a Grierson Award, a dozen jury awards, and was nominated for a 2022 Academy Award. Her first feature Laila at the Bridge screened at Locarno and had a theatrical release in the United Kingdom. As a cinematographer, her work has screened at TIFF and Venice, among others. She is a Film Independent Fellow, and has been a mentor for Global Media Makers and an advisor for Sundance Co//ab. She lives in California with her husband, Gulistan, their three daughters and family from Afghanistan. Natalia is her first independently directed film.

I’m interested in stories about people who are often queried or dismissed as strange, and how the invisible can have a profound hold on a person’s life.

– Elizabeth Mirzaei

Clocked

by Noah Salzman

Adolfo Rivera is an 18 year old, undefeated boxer from a conservative Catholic family in Miami, Florida. His love for his tight-knit family is apparent; not just in their time spent together, but in the bruises and broken bones he’s willing to endure time and time again, in order to help them pay the bills. Adolfo may be remarkably talented in the ring, but his family’s dreams for his profession are far different from what Adolfo has in mind. Adolfo is secretly saving his winnings for the biggest fight of his life; self acceptance in his desire to transition into a woman.

Unfiltered: The Truth About Oysters

by Josh McLawhorn

Ninety percent of the world’s ancient oyster reefs have collapsed in the last thirty years. Faced with the human pressures of coastal development, pollution, reduced freshwater flow, and over-harvesting, the renowned oyster reefs in Florida’s Apalachicola Bay are now slipping toward the same fate. Oysters have long been the silent protectors of the oceans, cleaning water and building the foundation of estuaries where thousands of species thrive, from plankton to game fish. They are living water filtration systems, storm barriers, and an ancient source of protein. The fate of oysters in Apalachicola Bay is not sealed. Fresh water management, artificial reefs, shell recycling, and other restoration strategies may be able to save the world’s oyster populations from complete collapse. It’s not too late.

The Last Movie Ever Made

by Nathan Blackwell

With the world about to end, Marshall convinces a group of friends and strangers to help finish the sci-fi movie he abandoned in high school.

About the Filmmaker

Phoenix-based filmmaker Nathan Blackwell started his career as a manic eleven year-old, making terrible movies. He’s since directed dozens of shorts, the comedy web series Voyage Trekkers, and three feature films. Most of them are rather weird and silly.

Pomp & Circumstance

by Adrian Anderson & Patrick Gray

This freewheeling, episodic lo-fi comedy pays tribute to youthful ennui in a world where originality feels elusive. In Burlington, Vermont, three soon-to-be-graduates – Charlie, an unconventional romantic, Thomas, an obsessed poet, and Marie, a budding documentarian become entangled in an absurd plot involving their professor, running for mayor. Shot entirely on 16mm film, this debut serves as a loving but sarcastic homage to 60s underground cinema and 90s indies.

Picture Day

by Kelly Pike

Casey, an Asian-American tomboy coming of age on Army bases, prepares for picture day at her new school, deciding what she’s willing to sacrifice in order to fit in. This film was made as part of the AFI Directing Workshop for Women.

Forward Fast

by Lorraine Sovern

While embarking upon a process of archival and preservation, a filmmaker dives into a stark exploration of self as she discovers the seeds of patriarchy and misogyny already planted and steeping the imagery of her childhood films.

Footprints

by Tathagata Ghosh

A single mother and lower caste slum dweller works as domestic help for a dysfunctional middle class family. As her world comes crashing down at work one day, she must stand up for herself by blurring the lines between the master and the maid.

Finish

by Dev Walker

Against all odds, a young man with autism and Tourette syndrome enters a grueling gravel race, pushing himself to the limit as he faces physical and mental challenges along the way.

Drawn

by Ty Clancey

A widower and his young daughter fend off a predatory land speculator by any means necessary in this psychological thriller set on a dying ranch in the Southwest. With shifting points of view and a twisting power structure, the story delves deep into our perception of control.

Hold to Dash

by John Connor Hammond

Neil Durst makes a living streaming his gaming skills to an audience of overstimulated, undersexed males. When he’s asked on a date by a female fan, Neil must leave his bedroom and take a plunge into the real world.

Bruno

by Michael Dean Wilkins

Bruno, living as a young gay Latino in high school, has just started to discover himself and his sexuality. Now that he has a new boyfriend, he feels he is finally ready to come out to his parents. However, after he tells this to his older sister Lucia, she soon reminds him that coming out to his parents isn’t the best idea.

Paper Planes

by Alyssa Thordarson, Michael Glover Smith

A woman with agoraphobia and the AirBnB guest across the hall strike up a correspondence that becomes something more for the holidays. A Christmas-set romantic comedy about the need for human connection in the modern world, the film is a cinematic holiday card, one that will make viewers’ hearts full by the time the end credits roll.

Discarded

by Ilana Goldman

A solo dancer (wearing a dress made from the plastic trash she generated over four months) embodies simultaneously both a woman and planet Earth reckoning with the impact of humans on the environment. Filmed on location at Glacier National Park as Artist-in-Residence and featuring a score by Patrick McKinney.

Emerald Sanctuary

by Conor MacDonnell

Emerald Sanctuary is a documentary investigating the impacts of seagrasses on the environment and culture of Florida as well as the their necessity to maintaining a healthy biodiversity. Directed by Conor MacDonnell whose scientific work focuses on improving the restoration of seagrass ecosystems critical to Florida’s fisheries, charismatic megafauna, and water quality.