Every October the highest value short film award in the world is given out in Cardiff. That award is the £30,000 Iris Prize, supported by The Michael Bishop Foundation, which is the only LGBT short film prize which allows the winner to make a new film.

At the culmination of a six days festival of LGBT film, the 2017 Iris Prize was awarded at a ceremony on Sunday afternoon.

This year, 35 short films were in contention from 20 countries. From amongst those, the winner was announced as filmmaker Mikael Bundsen’s Mother Knows Best. The 13-minute film consists of just two shots, focussing on a mother and her gay son as they drive somewhere after the mother has met her child’s boyfriend for the first time.

International Jury chair, Brian Robinson, commented, “Mother Knows Best is a brilliantly scripted and intense short film which uses a great economy of shots to tell a powerful and beautifully acted, universal story in which the realities of a young gay man’s different relationships with his parents are played out.”

The jury also commended the excellent Odd Job Man, about a middle-aged man whose life changes dramatically after he gets a job in a drag bar, as well as The Mess He Made, about a man waiting for the results of a rapid HIV test (you can watch The Mess He Made here).

The £20,000 Best British Short prize, sponsored by Pinewood Studios, was handed to We Love Moses, directed by Dionne Edwards. Best British jury chair Katie White said, “We Love Moses is a vividly realised tale of curiosity, secrecy and regret. One of its most refreshing aspects is the film’s mediation through the eyes of a young black girl, a perspective seldom foregrounded in cinema. Avoiding clichés of childhood innocence and naïveté, Edwards works more in the vein of a filmmaker like Catherine Breillat, allowing girlhood to be a space of sexual curiosity and wry observation.”

Along with the short films, numerous feature films also screened during the Iris Prize Festival. From those, the award for Best Performance in a Male Role went to Miles Szanto for Teenage Kicks, while Best Performance in a Female Role went to Fawzia Mirza for Signature Move. The Best Feature prize meanwhile went to Prom King, 2010, directed by debut feature filmmaker, Christopher Schaap.

Next year’s festival is already being planned for October 9th-14th 2018. (And take it from us, if you get the chance to attend, you should take it. They take their motto seriously – watch films, party nightly, repeat)

Come back to Big Gay Picture Show over the next few days for reviews of all of the short films that competed for this year’s International Iris Prize.

As writers, directors and producers, Mark and Jay Duplass have become key players in US indie film, using their profile to help champion a wide variety of movies made outside the mainstream. They’re now backing a Seed&Spark crowdfunding rally, which has brought together 73 prospective movies to help them raise funds.

The 10 films that get the most followers by October 13th will qualify for the finals and get to pitch The Duplass Brothers. Up to five could then get a $25,000 cash boost to their production budget, and get Duplass Brothers as executive producers.

Those competing includes several LGBT-related titles. That includes Andrew Paul Davis’ Indiana, which at the time of writing was just inside the top 10 movies. One of the film’s three leading characters is a lesbian student attending a Christian college. Alexa (Emily Sweet) wants to get her music noticed, but struggles to find an audience for rap. Her story mixes with that of Chris (Todd Bruno), a hardened auto-mechanic, who hopes to inspire a resurgence of white supremacist rhetoric in his community, and Chuck (Joe Martyn Ricke) lives a prematurely retired life in a little room above a bar in Fairmount, Indiana.

There’s also Test, which follows a young bodybuilder living in the Appalachians, who defies his religious mother when he follows Ohio’s ‘best’ coach into a world of steroid abuse and exploitation. Brock Yurich’s film explores the correlation between sexual repression and drug addiction, with substance abuse more than twice as prevalent amongst young LGBT people compared to the general population.

DIY meanwhile, is ‘A comedy about the institution of marriage from a queer perspective. As Josh and Matilda get sucked into the Wedding Planning Vortex, they are determined to do it their own way. Class and gender norms collide in this brazen carnival of non-conforming characters.’

In the horror film Wretch, ‘Nat’s long suffered hallucinatory psychic fits. Booze dulls the visions. Recently returned home to KC, buoyed by best friend Aleah and new partner Adam he’s got 30 days sobriety, a good job, a tenuous peace. But one cancer diagnosis, relapse and cult indoctrination later, all hell breaks loose.’

The queer rom-com Like Wonderland, based on Erica Messenger’s play, follows ‘Alice on her journey through love, confusion, heartbreak, and growing up in this romantic comedy that challenges you to question expectations and forge your own path through “Wonderland.”‘

You can find out more about all the movies over at Seed&Spark.