Congratulations to all our 2008 winners. Winning entries will be screened either at our official screening on Friday, October 31 or at the Grand Awards Ceremony on Saturday November 1, at 5:00 P.M. The following are the 2008 Redemptive Storyteller Award Winners for the Lifetime Achievement, and our four categories: Student, Professional, Professional Low Budget and Distinctly Gospel categories:
Lifetime AchievementThe Jesus Film Project
The goal of The JESUS Film Project is to help share Jesus with everyone in his or her own heart language using media tools and movement building strategies. The JESUS Film Project distributes the film "JESUS," a two-hour docudrama about the life of Christ based on the Gospel of Luke. The film has been seen in every country of the world and translated into hundreds of languages since its initial release in 1979. The goal is to reach every nation, tribe, people and tongue, helping them see and hear the story of Jesus in a language they can understand. So whether a person speaks Swahili, French, or a language whose name is extremely difficult for most to pronounce, he or she will encounter the life and message of Jesus in a language "of the heart." Many mission experts have acclaimed the "JESUS" film as one of the greatest evangelistic success stories of all time. Through use by The JESUS Film Project, and more than 1,500 Christian agencies, this powerful film has had more than 6 billion viewings worldwide since 1979.
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Student |
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Animal Instincts (Australia) - 5 mins GooRoo Animations This is an action-packed claymation. A cow and a sheep battle it out in a fight for ultimate farmyard supremacy. Just when you think they've sent each other to their demise, plummeting off the edge of an unexpected cliff, a miracle takes place. |
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Back to Me (USA) - 26 mins Tim Kashani - Director, Executive Producer Back to Me takes us on a magical journey with a Broadway actress struggling to find her life’s passion after the devastation of 9/11, until she is aided by an unlikely stranger. |
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Butterflies (USA) - 16 mins Amanda Cook - Prod., Andy Bailey - Dir. While all of his classmates bring amazing circus animals to show-and-tell, Patrick's only contribution is a small, shy hermit crab. This shy second-grader sees an x-ray and discovers he has butterflies in his stomach. Now he must find a way to get them out. |
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Heading South (USA) - 8 mins Jerry Kontogiorgis - Prod., Safia Dirie - Dir. To regain his life, Roger kidnaps his daughter Lucy, who proves to be bit of a challenge, as she has no desire to be kidnapped. Soon Roger realizes that in order to rebuild his life he must give rather than take. |
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Last Deal from the Mt. Carroll Gun Club (USA) - 23 mins, David Guffey - Director, Producer Real estate developers threaten to level the cabin where a bunch of old guys have played poker for decades. The members struggle to save their clubhouse and discover their friendship in the process. |
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Loved (USA) - 9 mins Nicholas Olszk - Dir,
Danielle Green, David Halagarda - coproducers Eponine, a young single mother, must take her reluctant daughter Jenny to the doctor's office, but she has no idea how this short trip will change their relationship forever. |
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Manny (USA) - 2 mins Manny is a two-minute 3D animation set in 1920's black and white silent film style. The story is about a wooden doll named Manny, a Porcelain doll, and a Flapper doll and finding love in the right places. |
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Nothing's the Same (Burundi, Africa/Canada) - 11 mins. Linda Kamuntu - Director Anémone, a girl raised with strict Christian values, must deal with a harsh new reality on the eve of her wedding. Will she find the strength and support needed to face life's challenges? |
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Order (USA) - 12 mins Daniel Cava - Director The Manager of Skipper Burger is a unique kind of guy. Watching his drive thru customers on his surveillance camera, he roots for them to make the right decisions and celebrates if they do. |
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Paper Shepherd (USA) - 8 mins David Houry - Director/Producer Chris is the janitor at a biogenetics company. They breed living sheets of paper for brutal fighting and death in an arena. Chris pities the papers and sets out to rescue them, hoping they’ll live greater lives …if given the freedom to choose. |
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The Miracle (USA) - 29 mins In confession to her priest, Tekki Lomnicki, a little person, reveals that she has dishonored her mother. Her confession spins out in a series of stories in which she will have to face the truth if she is to win a chance at redemption. |
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Cleaned Out (USA) - 10 mins Marion McMillan - Director, Producer A Young African American single mother gives up her freedom to provide her drug dealing son a second chance at life. After serving time she has to decide whether to fight for her life or for a relationship with her son. |
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One Small Sacrifish (USA) - 5 mins Josh Rubino - Writer, Director A young girl seizes an opportunity to sacrifice her image to help a friend in desperate need. |
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Keys (USA) - 23 mins Christopher Barbers - Director When Leann receives a grim diagnosis of cancer, she and her bi-racial son Eli travel back to her childhood home in the Midwest, in order for Leann to make amends with her estranged father. Upon her arrival, the healing between these two takes shape in the most unlikely of ways. |
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Professional |
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A Thousand Hills (Canada) - 107 mins Mary Allison Wilmarth - Director One voice can make all the difference --well, maybe two. Awkward 13 year old David tries to save his family's farm from an evil land-developer using the only thing he has - his voice - to make a CD and to win the heart of Kelly, the prettiest girl in school. |
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The Children Beyond Chernobyl (Belarus, Ireland) - 54 mins Ken Forgarty - Director A powerful and oftentimes disturbing documentary on the work of the Irish born anti nuclear campaigner Adi Roche who has devoted her life to highlighting the shocking consequences of the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear accident and to helping its victims. |
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Come What May (USA) - 93 mins George Escobar - Co-Director, Producer COME WHAT MAY features Patrick Henry College (PHC) and centers on pro-life issues fought in the U.S. Supreme Court and National Moot Court Championship. This movie tells the story of two PHC students who team up to lead the college to 'Nationals' where they end up battling to overturn Roe v. Wade.
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The Dark Horse (USA) - 110 mins Cornelia Duryee Moore - Writer, Director This is a story of struggle and redemption. Dana, a ballet teacher, reluctantly returns to her childhood home to discover that it is about to be sold. To save the farm, and the family, she must tame her mother's dangerous black horse, and ride him to victory in the year's biggest dressage competition. |
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Fissure (USA) - 89 mins Russ Pond - Dir. Nicholas Turner - Writer Still reeling from a personal tragedy, Detective Paul Grunning is sent on a routine call to a local professor's home. When things turn deadly, he must navigate a fractured reality to solve the mystery before it's too late. |
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Hit for Six! (Barbados) - 99 mins. Alison Saunders-Franklyn - Writer, Director A sidelined West Indies cricketer fights demons of his past, including a match fixing charge, and learns about love in an unlikely quest to play in a major global tournament and earn the respect of his estranged father, a former great West Indies player. |
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Icon ( Romania/USA) - 59 mins Teddy Grouya - Director, Producer. Some of the first churches
in Eastern Europe were carved out of caves by Saint Lucas and Saint
John who evangelized throughout the region during the 2nd century. Titiana
Popa, a prolific iconographer maintaining the tradition, is portrayed
in this film about her work. |
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Prodigal Sons (USA) - 26 mins Thomas Purifoy - Director, Producer. Prodigal Sons has been influenced
by the work of the great Orson Welles. With its non-linear structure,
its constantly moving cameras, its oblique angles, its sequence shots,
and its direct narration, the film seeks to pay tribute to one of America’s
greatest directors. |
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Redemption Stone - The Life and Times of Tom Lewis (USA) - 30 mins Tom Dziedzic - Producer, Director Redemption Stone introduces Tom Lewis, a storyteller of quiet power who brings an extraordinary spirit to his life and work. Tom’s compelling memoir recounts the aftereffects of poverty, social upheaval and rebirth that shape his unique American journey. |
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Second Chance Season (USA) - 97 mins Second Chance Season is a feature length documentary about a family's desperate attempt to triumph over tragedy by placing all of its hopes in the basketball aspirations of its youngest son. The inspirational story explores the long-term, residual effects senseless violence can have on a single family. |
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Somebody's Daughter (USA) - 47 mins John Evans - Director More than half the men in the United States, including pastors, admit they use porn. In Somebody's Daughter you meet four men who could be your neighbors. They were looked up to by wives, children, church folk. But porn was secretly eating each of them alive, just like it's eating millions in the world today. You will also meet a woman devastated by her husband's use of porn. |
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The Sower (USA) - 15 mins Thomas Purifoy - Director, Producer The documentary of The Sower
is paralleled to the parable of Jesus, by the same title. Although the
documentary has seen many forms throughout its history, we have attempted
a simple, self-narrated exploration of a farmer and his field. |
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Most
iatszom, most nem latszom (Hungary) - 30 mins Attila Szasz - Director It seemed like an ordinary day. Dad is experimenting in the lab, Mom is at home boiling water, while their six-year-old son, Alex, is playing around her. But this day is different. This day Dad brings something home from the lab. And the next morning...Alex becomes invisible. |
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Welcome to Paradise (USA) 105 mins Brent Huff - Director WELCOME TO PARADISE is an inspirational family film about a preacher, Debbie Laramie (Crystal Bernard) and her son Hayden (Bobby Edner), who are sent from a big city church to the small town of Paradise, where Debbie finds a community in desperate need of direction and a town that turns its back on its neediest neighbors. |
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Professional Low Budget (below $20,000) |
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A Brighter Future (USA) - 27 mins Eve Burris - Producer, Director A Brighter Future explores the relationship between singing in a choir and success in life. It looks at the ways that the discipline needed for rehearsals and the self-confidence needed for performance can be transferred to other areas of life. |
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Anew Day (USA) - 12 mins Darren Heater - Producer, Director
Joe Heinrichs - Producer Todd is an up and coming sales rep at a respected firm who goes about his daily routine, and yet he is unfulfilled in life. He is married yet his marriage is strained and at the end of each day he ends up at a coffee shop and carries on a conversation with a person who he can vent his frustrations and questions about life to. |
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Beauty (USA) - 2 mins Kevin Willson - Producer, Director An elegant story about a lonely girl who experiences a simple act of kindness that lifts her spirits, and gives her hope to see the world with a new perspective. |
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The Broken Road (USA) - 80 mins Eric Filson - Producer, Director Fired from his job, alone and running from his past, 19-year old Miles Rodden (Jascha Updike) learns of his brother’s death and finds himself facing a broken future. Fleeing after stealing his brother’s urn, Miles meets opportunistic TJ, in whose life he sees his own desperate journey mirrored. |
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Carjacked (USA) - 5 mins Scott Osborn - Producer, Director You would think that Amy C. Baker, a suburbanite soccer mom, would be safe from the big-city crime of carjacking. But safety is a delusion: She was shot, for the sake of her car, just a few blocks from her home. After months of physical rehab, she is given the opportunity to speak to the man who shot her... |
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Church of the Good Thief (USA) - 9 mins Michael Raab - Producer Dismas was a thief, a highwayman,
a robber and he was our first saint, the only saint |
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Closure "The Problem with Money" (USA) - 83 mins - Drew Kronlund Prominent businessman John A. Money's life is suddenly thrown into chaos when a quirky angel of death who eats donuts and wears bermuda shorts pays him a visit. Closure: the problem with money, a comedy about dying, and when presented with the fact that one has one day left on earth, what changes... if any...will that person make. |
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Epiphany at Chornobyl (USA) - 10 mins Irene Zabytko - Co-Director; Producer This film takes the viewer
to the site of the nuclear accident at the Chornobyl Nuclear Power Plant
which occurred on April 26, 1986 through recent footage and archival
photos taken during the disaster. The film features an elderly woman
who returns to home to the Chornobyl Exclusion Zone after the nuclear
explosion and maintains her traditions. |
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Greetings from Harve de Grace (USA) - 26 mins Mark Scalese - Producer, Director Examines the origin and meaning of the name of a small town in Maryland, Havre de Grace ('harbor of grace'). This lighthearted and lyrical film also explores the concept of grace, one's need for it, and whether any location can live up to such a name.
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In Spite of Darkness: A Spiritual Encounter with Auschwitz (Germany) - 74 mins Christof Wolf Producer, Director Five people find insight, awakening and healing inside the gates of the Auschwitz extermination camp. While encountering the memories and the realities of the Holocaust, these five, including an atheist, a Rabbi and a Catholic priest, come face to face with their own vulnerabilities and complicity... |
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Open Door (Mexico/USA) - 18 mins Rene' Simon Cruz - Producer, Director Open Door is a gritty bordertown
drama set in Tijuana, Mexico that explores the outer boundaries of violence,
forgiveness & sacrificial love. |
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Pie 'N Burger (USA) - 20 mins Clare Sera - Writer, Director One night a stranger's offbeat charm lights up the diner where Holly Stinson waits tables. Discovering his mysterious identity will end Holly's wait forever. |
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Stained (USA) - 17 mins
Joshua Weigel - Producer, Director In the near future, a young woman struggles under the oppression of the 'Old City', a deeply divided society that is isolated from the world around it and determined to preserve it's stability through the systematic segregation of its citizens. Driven by profound loss and a faded hopeful memory, Anya searches for a way out and finds she's not alone. |
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The Trail Least Traveled (USA) - 57 mins Scott Andrews - Producer, Director Legendary teacher Bill Coate and his wagon train full of crotchety cowboys take a sixth grade class of at-risk Latino immigrants on an epic journey in search of “The Trail Least Traveled.” |
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Distinctly Gospel |
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Binding Faith (India, USA) - 18 mins Dondra Vaughn - Producer Amardeep Singh Kaleka, Director A Christian minister from India is passionate about sharing his faith with his beloved countrymen, but when extremists threaten to riot, the only way he will be allowed to preach is if he first signs his own death warrant.
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Holyman Undercover (USA) - 89 mins David A.R. White - Producer, Director An Amish man moves to Hollywood
to be a missionary and gets cast as Satan on a nighttime soap opera.
While pursuing the girl of his dreams, Roy's fantasy quickly turns to
fertilizer when scheming networks, powerful producers and temperamental
co-stars turn his life into the world's worst reality show. |
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Reflections on Psalm 23 for People with Cancer (USA) - 114 mins D. Michael Hostetler - Producer, Director Bill Curtis, Producer Ken Curtis explores coping with advanced cancer from personal experience based on the inspiration of the 23rd Psalm.
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Rock Solid * (USA) - 20 mins Tonya Lehman - Producer, Director After returning from their own hike, a group leader tells her hikers the story of other children involved in a race to hike to the top of a mountain. While the two teams of hikers in her story encounter various difficulties on the trail up the mountain, the audience is reminded that God promises to always be with us, helping and guiding us, because He cares for us and loves us.
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Pink Shorts * (USA) - 9 mins Jeffrey Huston - Director After a girl purchases a pair of pink shorts that God Himself instructed her to buy, they become her most prized possession. She wears them always...until one day when God has a change of plans. As the girl endures this trial of faith, the purposes for God's actions are finally revealed, shocking everyone who attends the local church. |
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Washed by the Water (USA) - 6 mins Anthony CeCe - Dir, Julia Hunt - Prod. This music video tells the story of band members and brothers Bear and Bo Rinehart's father's challenge to his integrity when people begin to accuse him of something falsely. But the accusations are found to be false, and in the end we all need to be forgiven of transgressions and washed by the water. |
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Yai Wanonabalewa: The Enemy God * ( USA) - 100 mins Christopher Bessette - Director Angels and demons. God and Satan. Do they exist or are the figments of man's imagination? Could it be that the indigenous peoples of the earth know of a spiritual realm which we in the West are blithely unaware of? In this true story of life and death in the Amazon rainforest, The Enemy God film recounts the life of Shoefoot, an extraordinary Yanomamö shaman. His interaction with the spirit world gives us an astonishing insider's look at just what is taking place in this dimension of the spiritual realm that we know so little about! |
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* Recategorized |
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