The award-winning children went up on stage. A little girl went up to the microphone, and unfolded a piece of paper. The audience burst of laughter thinking, “Well, she is prepared.” She thanked all her supporters and the school. Big applauses from audience filled the theatre. That was the TIFF Kids awards ceremony. The ceremony is all about showing your movie talent on the stage.
On April 19th, 2015, we entered a large glass door. The building is called Bell Lightbox. It was crowded all around the floor. We got our tickets and headed to Cinema 1 and entered the room.
There were many different awards and categories. We were especially interested in Young People’s Jury Awards and Jump Cuts Young Filmmakers Showcase Awards.
The Young People’s Jury Awards is where children under 13 acted as jurors and chose the best film for their age categories. And the winners were Mune (Ages 8 to 10), When Marnie was There (Ages 11-13), and Granddaughter (age 9 to 13).
“We watched 9 movies and then we narrowed it down to 3 movies,” said Zachary Gan, a jury member from the 11-13 category. “We couldn’t agree and we were fighting.”
“When Marnie Was There” was the last movie they watched, and they loved the movie so much they decided to choose “When Marnie Was There” as the winner.
We asked Thomas Segsworth, a young jury for the 9 to 13 category, about the educational value in the films.
“Not particularly, not like any math questions or English writing skills, but it does teach [important lessons such as] how it feels to be blind,” Thomas said.
The Jump Cut winners are young filmmakers who made their own movies and submitted it to TIFF.
We interviewed the best film for grades 4-6 winners. Their movie was called BNN (Ban Bullying News).
The team thought that the film was a success because they worked hard on it and it was already very clear there were no mistakes.
“The hardest thing was to make the class be quiet because the class was loud,” said a team member. “Make the credits, put the names. That was the easiest part.”
They didn’t expect to win because they thought that the other short films are better than theirs and that they had less chance of winning.
We also interviewed the Veronica Herman Award Winners from grades 7-8, with their movie “Memoria.”
“We went to Wonderland [and we filmed on the ride],” said Diego Romero. “It was very hard because we aren’t allowed to bring cameras on the ride so we really had to hide the camera.”
They were very excited when they heard “Memoria” but very shocked that they won. They felt awesome going on stage and winning.
“The hardest part about making this was looking back through the film and adding ideas and taking away parts, also you have to connect the parts too like a puzzle.”
Going to the TIFF Kids International Film Festival was very inspiring because I now feel like making a movie myself. This is my first time going there, and I think that this is an event I will never forget.
