Nashville Film Festival Breaks Records, Names Winners

With more films yet to be viewed today (4/20) and tomorrow (4/21), the 2011 Nashville Film Festival has already broken its previous records for attendance and number of tickets sold. The event kicked off last Thursday (4/14) and wraps tomorrow night with the Closing Night Party at Mercy Lounge.
The festival’s top jury prizes have been awarded to Andrew Haigh’s Weekend, a tale of two men in a weekend affair, and Marshall Curry’s If A Tree Falls, a documentary about extreme environmentalist collective Earth Liberation Front. Weekend took the Bridgestone Grand Jury Prize for the narrative competition, and If A Tree Falls earned the Documentary Channel Grand Prize in the documentary competition. Weekend’s Tom Cullen earned best actor recognition and Guadalupe Alonso of Last Summer of La Boyita (an Honorable Mention in the narrative category) was named best actress.
Other honors included the New Directors Competition, with the grand prize going to Mike Magidson’s Inuk. Jacob Hatley’s music profile Ain’t In It For My Health: A Film About Levon Helm was presented with the Gibson Impact of Music Award, the top prize in Music Films/Music City Competition.
Still to come tonight (4/20) are the Tennessee premiere of Michael Tully’s Septien, which was filmed entirely in and around Nashville, as well as Will Gray’s Broke, a documentary about music artists struggling to find ways to thrive in a rapidly changing industry.