This week, the Yew Chung International School of Beijing proudly hosted its annual Film Festival! Featuring student submissions from across Secondary School, our young actors, actresses, directors, and screenwriters had the opportunity to display their work on the silver screen for the entire school to see.

Nearly a dozen student- and teacher-produced films, all several months in the making, were submitted for the festival. Films featured everything from thrillers to horror to even an entirely animated film, providing a greater deal of variety in subject matter compared with years past. It was a truly impressive showcase of our students’ dedication and creativity.

Non-Stop, by brothers Ward and Steven Wang, won the award for Best Picture this year. The film featured top-notch production values and a variety of real-world locations and extras to put it ahead of the competition.

Nina Fitzpatrick and Gianna Chun were jointly presented the Best Actress award for their stirring performances in Colour. The short film followed the lives of two young women as they fall in love with one another, bravely and deftly examining a subject for the first time in the festival’s history.

Finally, Daniel Jeong was an audience favorite for his comedic role in That Thing That Happened That One Time at Dog Lip County. The most recent part of a series of films inspired by legendary director Quentin Tarantino, Daniel’s performance had the audience in hysterics throughout.

Other awards included:

Best Soundtrack: Polaroid – By Chloe Sandifer-Stech, Claudia Rader, Deborah Qu, Natalie Rader, and Paris LeCleir

Best Animation: The Circle – Directed and Animated by Jiwon Baek

Best Action: Non-Stop – By Ward and Steven Wang

Best Script: That Thing That Happened That One Time at Dog Lip County – By Marcus Chung, David Tso, Kershap Pastakia, Gino Chiu, and Daniel Jeong

Best Teamwork: The Teacher from Hell – By Jaskiran Arora, Tracy Li, Caroline He, Alfie Yeow, and Caden Chng

Audience participation was once again a major part of the event, and voting this year received a high-tech upgrade. This year’s voting process forwent paper ballots and stickers in favor of smartphone-based voting via Kahoot, enabling all voters to see live tallies of the votes rolling in for each category on the auditorium screen.

Congratulations to the award winners on their miraculous work!