PRESS RELEASE
In a clean sweep for South Australian filmmakers, the Adelaide Film Festival (AFF) has announced the winners of the AFF 2024 Audience Awards.
Lesbian Space Princess has taken out the Feature Fiction Audience Award. Songs Inside has won the Feature Documentary Audience Award and the winner of the Short Film Audience Award is Finding Jia.
Songs Inside is the first feature film directed by Shalom Almond who has previously directed television including Prisoners and Pups which screened at AFF to sold out audiences in 2015. The film features South Australia’s beloved First Nations singer and songwriter Nancy Bates who leads a music program within the prison as they work toward a performance in collaboration with the Adelaide Symphony Orchestra (ASO). Members of the ASO, Nancy Bates and members of the prison group Songbirds performed at the Premiere in a memorable night at The Capri Cinema. Songs Inside is an Adelaide Film Festival Investment Fund Film (AFFIF).
Lesbian Space Princess, directed by South Australians Emma Hough Hobbs and Leela Varghese, is an animated feature film about an introverted space princess who is forced to leave her home planet on an inter-gay-lactic mission to save her ex-girlfriend from the Straight White Maliens.Lesbian Space Princess is the second film to come out of the Film Lab New Voices initiative run by the South Australian Film Corporation, Screen Australia and Adelaide Film Festival. Lesbian Space Princess received investment from the Adelaide Film Festival Investment Fund (AFFIF).
Finding Jia, directed by Alice Yang, also won the Jury- determined Shorts Award, announced on AFF Closing Night. The 13-minute film tells of 8-year-old Mei who, while watching TV from the back of her parent’s store, yearns for the picture of Australian home life she sees on screen.
The Audience Award winners’ announcement wraps up a remarkable two weeks for the Festival which continues its growth trajectory of recent years with 2024 seeing new box office and audience attendance records.
AFF CEO & Creative Director Mat Kesting said: “These awards clearly reflect the audience’s desire to see our own Australian culture and stories on the big screen. The AFF team is thrilled to see these three local films embraced alongside the extraordinary international films presented at AFF. The energy around the festival was palpable with interactions between audiences and filmmakers and sessions selling out across the city. We’ve already started work on the 2025 program and cannot wait to build further on audience engagement in the years to come.”
For more information about AFF Awards program go to: https://www.adelaidefilmfestival.org/info/awards/2024-winners
