2018

Best of Fest
Narrative Feature
United States
Runtime:
1 hour(s)
37 minutes
Director:
Laura Somers

A group of troubled teens from a low-income community break into Los Ricos, the local mansion with a border fence, and spend the day pretending to be rich in order to forget their difficult lives.

Best Narrative Short
Narrative Short
United States
Runtime:
7 minutes
Director:
Austin Madding

The 2018 Paducah 48 Hour Film Project winner.A story about balance. A woman is stalked by a terrifying figure. Not everything is as it seems.

Best Documentary Short
Documentary Short
United States
Runtime:
12 minutes
Director:
Ryan Maxey & Zack Wright

Willcox, Arizona is a country music town that isn’t what it used to be. The town has a single radio station, run by one employee who lives at the studio, and is seen as an outcast by many of the townspeople.

This unlikely champion of country music has a troubled history with the music that he plays every day. But he’s keeping it alive for the old folks, and looking for redemption over the airwaves.

Best Documentary Feature
Documentary Feature
United States
Runtime:
1 hour(s)
8 minutes
Director:
Glenn Hall

This film follows the 4th and 5th generation commercial fisherman working the Ohio River Valley Kentucky Lake and Lake Barkley on the Tennessee River. The problems faced by rules and regulations and trying to make the invasive species Asian Carp profitable.

Documentary Feature
United States
Runtime:
1 hour(s)
5 minutes
Director:
Georg Koszulinski

On January 20, 2017, protestors took to the streets of Washington DC to disrupt the Inauguration of President Donald J. Trump. America is Waiting presents a chronicle of the day's events, employing affective approaches to observational documentary coupled with on-the-street interviews with protestors and pro-Trump alike. By presenting the day's events in reverse chronological order, the film reflects on the nature of constructed memory, image making, and the production of meaning across an historic event, calling into question the ways in which historical events become narrativized and condensed within popular discourse.

Narrative Feature
Australia
Runtime:
1 hour(s)
47 minutes
Director:
Chris and Robert Smellin

18-year-old Ally meets 19-year-old Sara, when she moves in next-door. Quickly they form a strong relationship as Ally finds solace with Sara. Soon Sara discovers Ally's secrets and she manipulates and convinces her to participate in an act of naive revenge against Ally's abuser.

Narrative Short
United States
Runtime:
14 minutes
Director:
Greg Chwerchak

Based on a true story, "Sac de Merde" tells the tale of Mazel Mankewicz, an unlucky-in-love yet irrationally optimistic New Yorker who thinks her luck has changed when she spends the night with the man of her dreams. As it turns out, he might just be full of shit. Literally.

Narrative Feature
United States
Runtime:
1 hour(s)
37 minutes
Director:
Anthony Pedone

An angry, crackling and defiantly disordered underclass of nowheresville punk- rock kids, see their band Surgeon Generals Warning (SGW) as their ticket out of small town Texas, as 1990 comes to a close. The band drops acid, plays gigs and carries out calculated acts of vandalism around town to the television soundtrack of 24-hour newscasts about Operation Desert Storm and devotion to country at any cost. Faced with the reality of a dead end job at the plastic plant, a life in the oil field, or fighting a war that has no meaning to them, the group's chaos and imminent adulthood leaves them completely vulnerable for what ensues.

Documentary Short
United States
Runtime:
56 minutes
Director:
Mark Stoffel & H.D. Motyl

The 2017 total solar eclipse was undoubtedly one of the most anticipated events in recent history, with Carbondale, Illinois smack in the spot of longest duration. Students, staff and faculty of Southern Illinois University's College of Mass Communication and Media Arts taped hundreds of hours of eclipse-related planning and interviews even before they captured this natural wonder above Southern Illinois. The resulting documentary, In the Shadow, highlights the history, the science and, above all, the sublime human experience of witnessing a total solar eclipse in Southern Illinois on August 21, 2017.

Documentary Short
United States
Runtime:
9 minutes
Director:
Ava Lowrey

In Kentucky, Soup Beans serve as both a culinary staple of the region and a communal dish that connects Kentuckians past and present. Chef Ouita Michel and her mentor Freda Raglin paint a pinto-filled picture of Kentucky in this documentary short.

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