YOUR DAILY GUIDE TO THE 2011 TACOMA FILM FESTIVAL >>>
This afternoon inside the Pacific Grill Events Center awards for best films at the Tacoma Film Festival were handed out in front of a full room.
Well, technically, they handed out only one award. Kate Connor, director of the feature film Fort McCoy, was the only winning filmmaker in the room full of TFF staff, filmmakers, actors and the public. Connor grabbed the Audience Choice Award for her drama based on a true story about a Wisconsin family that lived next door to a Nazi POW camp.
The other winners were absent, which isn't a huge surprise since the festival screens films from around the world.
Emcee Warren Etheredge, one of the founding members of The Film School in Seattle, was thrilled he didn't have to accept another award from an absentee filmmaker.
"We are so honored and touched to win this award," Connor told the crowd. "We have had so much fun in Tacoma."
Here are the other winning films at the 6th Annual Tacoma Film Festival:
Best Feature Film: Sooney Kadouh's This Narrow Place, a drama about a young Palestinian man who strikes up an unlikely friendship with a lonely drug addict.
Best Animated Film: William Joyce and Bandon Oldenburg's The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore, which had Buster Keaton written all over it.
Best Regional Film: Connect To, a short by Sam Nuttmann about a hygiene obsessed man who accidentally stows away on a cross-country bus.
Best Documentary Film: Jeff and Michael Zibalist's The Two Escobars, the tragic story of the intertwined relationship between drug king Pablo Escobar and Columbia soccer star Andres Escobar.
Best Short Film: Julian A. Higgins's Thief, the haunting story of 12-year-old Mehdi who befriends young Saddam Hussein in 1959.
The Film School's Great American Storyteller Prize: John Henry Summerour's Sahkanga, the story of a tragic event seen through a teenager's eyes.
LINK: Opening Night Gala photos
LINK: Three stories behind the stories
LINK: Big stars at the Tacoma Film Festival 2011
LINK: Our Tacoma Film Festival preview
LINK: TFF Director Emily Alm's picks
LINK: TFF on twitter
LINK: TFF website