The Willson Oakville Film Festival, Oakville’s first and only independent film festival, and Film.ca, the festival’s Lead Venue Sponsor, are proud to announce the winners of the Film.ca Audience Choice Awards following its third annual film festival, which occurred June 24-26, in Oakville, Ontario.
The Winner of BEST FEATURE is the Canadian Indie Film SCRATCH, which was a world premiere for the festival, with a sold out audience. The film is an action heist “on the edge of your seat” film featuring a female rookie armoured truck guard, caught between her coworkers plot to rob their own truck and greedy gangsters desperate to grab the loot. SCRATCH sold out a few weeks before the festival.
Director Maninder Chana intends to release the film theatrically later this year. Chana and Producer Michael Dragnea are thrilled with the award: “This is amazing! Thank you so much for putting Scratch into the festival. This is the best result moving forward with this film that we could have hoped for..This has been one of the best festival experiences I've had and I've had films screened around the world. For three years in you have your act together better than those that have been doing it for decades. Continued success. Keep going!”
Chana’s four-language feature Little Terrors, starring Bollywood legend Om Puri (Gandhi, East is East) was released theatrically Fall of 2014 to rave reviews and was just released on VOD across North America. His supernatural thriller Cell 213, released theatrically in 2011, stars Eric Balfour (Skyline), Michael Rooker (Walking Dead, Guardians of the Galaxy), and Bruce Greenwood (Star Trek).
The winner of Best Short is local Producer/Director Jeremy McCracken’s poignant ten minute short film, Fastball, in which a young boy deals with his grief over losing his mother by playing baseball.
"We really enjoyed the experience of screening our short film Fastball at the Willson Oakville Film Festival. It was the North American premiere, so this was the first time we were able to view it in a theatre, on the big screen. Hearing that we won the audience award for best short film was just incredible. Fastball is a very personal film created with the hopes that the audience would connect with it, so it’s meaningful to get that feedback," stated Jeremy McCracken.
Next up for Fastball is a continuation of the festival circuit as it has been selected to program in three more international festivals, including a screening at the Rivne International Film Festival in Ukraine, at the end of August.
"We were thrilled to host the festival at Film.Ca again this year. We always love supporting local and independent filmmakers and think that the Film.Ca Audience Choice award winners show off some of the best of what our very talented filmmaking community has to offer,” stated Jeff Knoll, CEO of Film.ca
Winners get a cash prize of $700 for Best Feature, and $500 for Best Short along with certificates from the festival. The 2016 Willson Oakville Film Festival occurred from 24-26 June and attracted record numbers, with four sold out films. Films for the 2017 festival are being curated, so stay tuned.
