Students from the IB film classes held their annual IB Film Festival, marking the fifteenth consecutive year of the festival. The amount and variety of films was diverse, ranging from thrillers, comedies, horror, documentaries and parody.

The top film of the night, as chosen by the judges, was The Lonely Road, by Noah Wolfenstein, Stephen Read and Travis Swann.

“Stephen and I have always been musical people so we wanted to play out a pretty common scenario where some parents aren’t supportive of music for their kids,” Wolfenstein said. “Winning jury prize was a huge surprise and incredibly satisfying after all the hard work and sleepless nights we put into this movie. Especially during one of the most competitive film festival in years, where every movie was fantastic, to come out on top was pretty awesome.”

Dark comedy The Ghost, by Steven Aderton won the audience’s choice. The film was about the antics of Mark and his goofy ghost roommate.

“Comedy is always challenging because it demands constant audience reaction.” Aderton said. “I had to find a convincing way to match the audiences expectations of what a ghost would look like to what actually would appear on film.”

During the awards show, IB film teacher Alan Weintraut presented an honorary award to the Barker family, for their contributions the school and film program. James Barker was given a shout-out as well for setting up the films and technical systems.

“I love the film class. We’re basically a family. Everyone is really supportive of each other’s films and it’s just a lot of fun! The festival was really great!” Barker said. “It was the best one in years. Every single film was well done and was interesting.”

Weintraut was also greatly impressed with the outcome of the night and the level of professionalism in the films this year.

“My overall impression is that this is the best batch of films we’ve had in the 15 years that I have been doing the festival,” Weintraut said. “and the real unsung hero here is James Barker, who set everything up and used the program for running the films.”

The rest of the winners are as follows:

Jury prize – The Lonely Road

Audience choice – The Ghost, runner up – Chill, Bill

Best Documentary – I’m Just a Teenage Muslim, Baby

Best screenplay – The Lonely Road

Best cinematography – Finland

Best editing – The Ghost

Best actor – Stephen Read

Best actress – Zoe Faulks