October  6, 2022

Congratulations to this year's winners:

 

GRAND PRIZE FEATURE
The Captain's Heart
directed by Simon Bang
Runtime: 1:34:14
Denmark

 

The director sets out to understand his maternal grandfather, the late Captain Goth (1893-1966). In the process, he had to recreate the ship that was the Captain’s life and great love. Through interviews with his remaining children, mementos from his old ships chest, photos and archival material mixed with hand-drawn animations, the film depicts a turbulent time in world history through a man willing to defy submarines, mines, bombing and shipwrecks to serve God, King and country. But after 50 years at sea, the new world no longer accords with the Captain's rules, and his heart is not as stubborn as his will. He can keep the world and its wars at bay, but he cannot control his family and their desire for freedom. Nor can he submit to the new world that has arisen from the ashes of the old. Seventeen years in the making, acclaimed storyboard artist and painter Simon Bang in his first feature documentary digs into a painful family story spanning two world wars and a life at sea.

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GRAND PRIZE SHORT
Salt Lines
directed by Dan McDougall
Runtime: 16:12
United Kingdom

Set in Correa, Downeast Maine, USA, Salt Lines tells the extraordinary and uplifting story of a single mother, hauling lobster traps for a living in an unforgiving man’s world. Raising her own son, created with an anonymous sperm donor, to be the fifth generation “Lobsterman” in her family, whilst consigning gender stereotypes to the past.

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CO-RUNNER-UP FEATURE
Aquariums: The Dark Hobby

directed by Paula Fouce

Runtime: 55:42

United States
 

In Hawai'i, a group of Native Hawaiians and conservationists struggles politically to protect the exotic fish being looted from the reefs. Turtles, whales, and dolphins are all protected, but not the fish. Now many verges on extinction. 28 million fish are in the aquarium trade pipeline at any given time. They undergo bladder piercing, fin cutting and starvation for shipment and reach the mainland dead or dying. They would have lived up to forty years on a reef. Fish species are in crisis worldwide and many are caught with cyanide and dynamite.

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CO-RUNNER-UP FEATURE
Savage Waters
directed by Mikey Corker
Runtime: 1:33:00
France

 

How far would you go searching for something that may not exist? A 19th century treasure-hunter’s journal inspires a captivating journey to seek out and surf a mythical, never-ridden wave in some of the most remote and dangerous waters of the Atlantic Ocean. For renowned skipper, Matt Knight, sailing to unpredictable and uncharted regions is impossible to resist. As a lifelong thrill-seeker, he is constantly testing the limits of what’s possible, something world-class big wave surfer Andrew Cotton has also built his career on. With family and friends, they board the beautiful catamaran Hecate and follow clues to this ‘perfect wave’, but not everything goes to plan, with serious injury and life-threatening challenges testing the crew’s resilience and attitudes towards risk. SAVAGE WATERS, narrated by the legendary Charles Dance, boasts jaw-dropping cinematography, and follows remarkable protagonists, for whom living life to the full often means putting themselves in harm’s way.

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RUNNER-UP SHORT
The Depths of Ningaloo
Schmidt Ocean Institute
Runtime: 11:42:00
United States

 

In March 2020, a team of ocean scientists set out to observe, document, and characterize the deep-sea biodiversity in the Cape Range and Ningaloo Canyons - a region off of Western Australia, where almost no exploration had taken place. This documentary was filmed entirely at sea, as Schmidt Ocean Institute’s research vessel Falkor - along with their underwater robot, Remotely Operated Vehicle (ROV) SuBastian - collected beautiful visual surveys and sampling of the environment, providing important evidence for the unique life forms and geologic structures of this little-studied region. The remote Western Australian coast is well known for its immense diversity of evolutionary significant fauna, but this celebrated area remained nearly unexplored until this first-of-its-kind expedition.

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HONORABLE MENTION
Fishing with Wally
directed by Ellie Schmidt 
Runtime: 20:00
United States

 

On the leeward coast of the island of Oahu, traditional forms of Hawaiian fishing endure. Wally Akuna Jr. and his extended family practice drop-net fishing for a schooling pelagic fish called Akule. One day Wally and his family prepare for a day in the water, and the filmmaker tags along.

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