2024 SAAFF Awards
This year’s jury and festival awards will be announced on Monday, February 26. Audience choice awards will be announced after the festival. Stay tuned to our social media on find out who the winners are!
Grand Jury Awards
Narrative Feature
Sorry, We’re Dead (directed by Alex Zajicek)
Alex Zajicek’s SORRY, WE’RE DEAD is a film for a new generation of creatives, challenging expectations and delving deep into an absurd and comedicaly original subconscious. The film embodies a rare and refreshing representation of Asian American artists without tokenizing the protagonist or essentializing her experiences. Its creative and tonal consistency is striking, embodying an unwavering chaos and erraticism that adds nuance to Lana’s depressive spiral while teasing out the queer tensions inherent in the struggle to make art beneath repressive and restrictive systems, and the decision to persevere nonetheless.
Documentary Feature
Unseen (directed by Set Hernandez)
Shining through from the heart of UNSEEN is the intimacy and trust shared between filmmaker Set Hernandez and his subject, Pedro. The longevity of their relationship and the ways their experiences and identities intertwine is inherent in the film’s technical beauty and compelling narrative. Hernandez offers an innovative and necessarily jarring perspective on visual impairment, experimenting with concealment to reveal truths about what we cannot see, what we want to see, and what we are unwilling to see. Despite what is intentionally obscured within the frame, the power and nuance of Pedro’s character is rendered in perfect clarity – Hernandez attends to his care and gentleness for others, his own self-criticism, and the anger he is forced to suppress in a narrative that traces the intersections between immigration, mental health, and disability.
Narrative Short
Tantrum (directed by Soomin Choi )
Intimate and emotional, TANTRUM is an immersive account of the complicated intergenerational relationships between three Asian American women. It is a story perfectly fit for its medium; director Soomin Choi vividly synthesizes the technical elements of filmmaking to create a lived-in world that depicts the nuanced relationships that immigrant and first generation families have with space, communication, care, and each other. The performance of Olivia Yang Avis as young Moa is outstandingly naturalistic and gentle, enlivening the world of the film. The story subverts a clean resolution, instead opting to express a subtle yet affecting continuity of life.
Documentary Short
Homestead (directed by Justin Hiromi Pascua)
The graceful and vibrant cinematic language of Justin Hiromi Pascua’s HOMESTEAD traces a narrative that examines the nuances of labor in Asian families. In its gentle distillation of moments of exchange between Liane and her grandson Aiden, the film teases out what is often unspoken yet still inherent in many relationships with elders, such as the layers of heritage, history, and love that contribute to intergenerational education and labor. What’s more, the film’s subtlety invites viewers themselves to labor in order to piece together its narrative, surfacing the work involved in connection, transmission, meaning making, and finding or making a home.
Narrative Feature Nominations
The Accidental Getaway Driver
directed by Sing J. Lee
The Harvest
directed by Caylee So
Sorry, We’re Dead (Winner)
directed by Alex Zajicek
Chindia
directed by Sikandar Sidhu
Narrative Short Nominations
A Roadside Banquet
directed by Peiqi Peng
THE VAN
directed by Bernard Badion
Tantrum (Winner)
directed by Soomin Choi
100% USDA Certified Organic Homemade Tofu
directed by Gbenga Komolafe
Confused Blood
directed by James Cutler
Documentary Feature Nominations
Starring Jerry As Himself
directed by Law Chen
American Son
directed by Jay Caspian Kang
(Winner) unseen
directed by Set Hernandez
Coming Around
directed by Sandra Itäinen
Documentary Short Nominations
默 (To Write from Memory)
directed by Emory Chao Johnson
Matsutake
directed by Theodore Caleb Haas
Chu Ki Won : The Bridge (다리)
directed by Chu Ki Won
(Winner) Homestead
directed by Justin Hiromi Pascua
Disappearing Jewels
directed by Will Kim
Festival Awards
Cinemetropolis Award
for best local short film (made in WA state and/or by a filmmaker(s) currently residing in WA state)
Matsutake (directed by Theodore Caleb Haas)
Like a dense and nourishing mushroom burrowed beneath fertile soil, generations of familial exchange and survival are rooted deep to the core of Theodore Caleb Haas’s MATSUTAKE. The whole film feels rightfully nourished, not only by the hearty fungi that Homer Yasui so caringly harvests with his family, but also by an attendance to a rich and complex history. The film embodies a unique joy that can be found through witnessing elders be happy. The film itself, directed by a fourth-generation member of the Yasui family, is itself a continuation of this legacy.
Nominations
Matsutake (Winner)
directed by Theodore Caleb Haas
Riding Han
directed by Eugene Pak
She Marches in Chinatown
directed by Della Chen
Chu Ki Won : The Bridge (다리)
directed by Chu Ki Won
The Resting Place: Nơi An Nghỉ
directed by Kate Hoyt, Hallie Harper
From Kingston, Jamaica to Jamaica, Queens
directed by Titi Yu
Robin Award
for best animated short film
Goose Quest (directed by Clarissa Chua)
Clarisse Chua’s GOOSE QUEST is a cozy yet existential homage to childhood pixel gaming. With soothing music and a charming 8-bit design, the film encapsulates the escape that video games offer to their players as safe, sealed testing grounds for big and often frightening ideas. Despite only being made up of a few pixels, each character feels unique, dimensional, and slightly familiar, and their lived-in complexities draw us into Goosie’s journey. What’s more, the video game aesthetic and structure adds another dimension to the viewing experience, and makes the viewer feel like they are playing along, and discovering the same freedom and agency that Goosie uncovers.
Nominations
Disappearing Jewels
directed by Will Kim
Aikāne
directed by Daniel Sousa
Goose Quest (Winner)
directed by Clarissa Chua
Mission Popo
directed by Jennifer Wu
Fortune Cookie
directed by Fu Yang
Audience Choice Awards
Make sure to vote for your favorite films after you finish watching them!
For virtual screenings you can vote directly through Eventive. For in-person screenings, we will have QR codes at the venue that will direct to a form to cast your votes; if you include your email you will be submitted into a raffle for a Daniel Broilers gift card!
Check back here after the festival is over when we announce the Audience Choice Awards.