Nantucket Film Festival Announces Awards

The Nantucket Film Festival (NFF) announced its annual awards Tuesday, wrapping up the 30th edition of the festival.

“The Baltimorons,” directed by Jay Duplass, won the audience award for best narrative feature. The film, which stars Duplass’s co-writer, Michael Strassner, is about the connection between a man struggling with his newfound sobriety and his emergency dentist. “The Baltimorons” was also named Best of the Fest, earning a repeat screening. The film premiered at the South by Southwest film festival earlier this year before winning its awards at NFF.

It was joined by “Middletown,” about a 1990s upstate New York high school class that exposed a local environmental pollution scandal, which was the recipient of the Audience Award for Best Documentary Feature. “Middletown,” directed by Jesse Moss and Amanda McBain, screened at Sundance along with a number of other NFF films, and currently holds a perfect 100% score from 19 critics on the review aggregation site Rotten Tomatoes.

The other Best of the Fest winner was “East of Wall,” another Sundance premiere with a perfect Rotten Tomatoes score, which follows a rebellious horse trainer who struggles with financial hardship and unresolved grief while hosting a group of troubled teenagers at her ranch. The film, written and directed by Kate Beecroft, also won the Adrienne Shelley Foundation Excellence in Filmmaking Award, a $5,000 grant recognizing the achievement of a female filmmaker.

Other cash prizes include the Maria Mitchell Visionary Award sponsored by the Maria Mitchell Association, a $5,000 prize given to a female filmmaker who demonstrates vision and innovation, which was awarded to “Marlee Matlin: Not Alone Anymore,” Shoshannah Stern’s documentary about “CODA” actress Marlee Matlin.

Non-profit media company Shine Global’s Children’s Resilience in Screenwriting Award, a new prize given to a film with outstanding storytelling that effectively portrays the resilience and strength of children, went to “DJ Ahmet,” written and directed by Georgi Unkovski. The award comes with $2,500 and an invitation to participate in Shine Global’s upcoming 2025 Resilience Awards events.

In the short film categories, “Snow Bear,” following a polar bear, won the Narrative Short Film Audience Award and the Teen View Jury Award, the latter of which is awarded by local seventh and eighth-grade students. “Last Days on Lake Trinity,” about three women from Florida searching for a new home after their trailer park is marked for closure, won the Documentary Short Film Audience Award.

Finally, NFF announced the winners of the annual Tony Cox Screenplay Competition for unproduced screenplays and television pilots submitted to the festival by emerging writers. Winners included Alex Murawski for “Walking in Iowa,” Maxwell Gold for “19 KM From Kyiv,” Devi Snively for “The Temp” and Chris Martinez for “Hombre.” The awards total $5,000, and Murawski, who the Feature Screenplay Competition, is also invited to the annual writer’s retreat run by Almanack Screenwriters.