Wil Franz’s “Nanmoku,” a film by a SCAD Film & Television student, received two honors at the 29th annual SCAD Savannah Film Festival: the $5,000 Katie Spikes Legacy Scholarship and Best Student Documentary Short. The festival announced its 2026 awards for films screened during the event.
Festival audiences selected “You Can See Everything,” directed by Nathan Fielder and Lance Oppenheim, for the Audience Award. “Wildwood,” directed by Travis Knight, placed second in that audience vote. The International Audience Award went to “La Bola Negra,” directed by Javier Calvo and Javier Ambrossi.
Professional Competition awards
Industry-professional juries chose the winners from close to 100 submissions in the Professional Competition, which included feature films, short films, documentaries and animation.
“The Huntress,” directed by Suzanne Andrews Correra, won Best Fiction Feature. Best Documentary Feature went to “The Secret Reading Club of Kabul,” directed by Shakiba Adil and Elina Hirvonen. Carlitos Ruiz-Ruiz received Best Director, Fiction Feature for “Summer of Three.”
Among the short-film awards, “Them That’s Not,” directed by Mekhai Lee, won Best Live Action Short. “Plant Life,” directed by Brett Marty and Josh Izenberg, took Best Documentary Short, while Bara Anna’s “9 Million Colors” won Best Animated Short. Best Director, Live Action Short went to Gus Flind-Henry and George Malcher for “A Sisyphean Task.”
Other professional-jury honors went to Brock Yurich, recipient of the Valiant Cinema Award for “Test”; “Callback,” directed by Matthew Puccini, for the Jury Award for Excellence in Performance; and “The Baddest Speechwriter of All,” by Stephen Curry and Ben Proudfoot, for the Special Jury Award. The Documentary Short Jury gave an honorable mention to “The Making of Taylor Square,” directed by Caroline Josey Karoki.
Student film honors
In addition to Franz’s scholarship and documentary-short award, Best Student Short went to “KATTI (Unfriend),” directed by Kanishka Aggarwal of Chapman University. SCAD student Le Hang Whalen won Best Student Animated Short for “Stone Lions Don’t Roar.”
The Student Shorts Jury Award went to “With You,” directed by SCAD student Rebecca Floto. “From the Sound to the Sea,” directed by SCAD student Olivia Jackson, received the Katie Spikes Jury Award for Journalistic Integrity.
The Katie Spikes Legacy Scholarship is named for Spikes, a journalist and friend of the festival who died in 2023. The SCAD Savannah Film Festival is slated to return for its 30th year in 2027.
Yolonda Harris
News Now Georgia
