BY PAT MULLEN POV Magazine
A Mother Apart topped the winners at this year’s Inside Out 2SLGBTQ+ Film Festival. The documentary directed by Laurie Townshend and produced by OYA Media and the National Film Board of Canadian scored three prizes at the festival: Best Canadian Feature, Best First Feature, and the Audience Award for Documentary. The juried awards for Canadian and first feature each carried a cash prize of $3,000, sponsored by DGC National and NBC Universal, respectively, while the Audience Award had a purse of $2,500 sponsored by Paramount+.
A Mother Apart follows Jamaican-American poet and activist Staceyann Chin as she embarks on a journey to reconnect with her mother while strengthening her own relationship with her daughter. The film had its world premiere at Hot Docs last month.
Other winners at Inside Out include Hayley Morin’s I’ll Tell You When I’m Ready, which won the Emerging Canadian Artist award, and Friend of a Friend (Ami d’ami) by Simon Gualtieri, which won the award for Best Canadian Short. Sisters, directed by Suzie Yankou, and The History of the Carabiner, directed by Gianna Mazzeo, scored the Audience Awards for narrative feature and short film, respectively. Lou Goossens, finally, won the Leadership Circle performance prize for Young Hearts while Andrew Chappelle’s I’m Gonna Kill You won the Pitch, Please! prize.
