The 13th annual DTLA Film Festival has announced its winners. Florencia Krochik’s The Rest of Us, a feature documentary about DACA kids shot over a decade, won Best Picture. Other winners included director Martin Torrez’ The Great American Low Rider Tradition, a feature documentary about the Lowrider culture of East Los Angeles, which took the Audience Favorite Award Sophie Galibert was named Best Director for Cherry, a narrative dramedy that tackles the hot-button topic of abortion.
Also taking honors were Jessica Rae for Best Screenplay (Raise Your Hand), 5-25-77 for Best Editing and The Art of Rebellion for Best Documentary Feature. The scifi thriller Catalyst, making its world premiere, was awarded prizes for Best Ensemble Cast and Best Special Effects. The Best Anthology Film award went to Covid Sins & Virtues.
This year the festival changed to nongender-specific acting categories. Best Actors awards for lead performances in a feature film were given to Ericka Clevenger (Red Raincoats), Jesse Gavin (Northern Exposure), Austin Nichols, (Match), Ahna O’Reilly (Matc”), Nina Tarr (Red Raincoats), Alexandria Treuwhitt (Cherry) and Dee Wallace (Nix).
Among the winners In the shorts series, which included films, TV pilots and webseries, were director Akiko Izumitani’ Yae: Blind Samurai Woman, Best Short Film; director Richard Andrews Janes’ Faculty Lounging for Best TV Pilot, and director Carolyn Ratteray’s (Un)claimed for Best Web Series.
This year’s festival which was held September 14-18 at Regal L.A. Live, was the first after the five-day event took a two-year hiatus because of the pandemic. Established in 2008, DTLA Film Festival is dedicated to diversity in cinema. Of the 100-plus films screening at this year’s festival, more than 40 percent were by women directors and the majority by directors of color.
The entire list of winners is available on the festival website at http://www.dtlaff.com.