Brave New Hollywood was in attendance for the red carpet kickoff of the 2nd annual Evolution International Film Festival on Friday July 26th at the Los Angeles Film School in Hollywood. The festival features socially relevant new indie films that are provocative and innovative in a variety of competitive categories, including narrative movies, shorts, documentaries, documentary shorts, and animated shorts.
EIFF director Sandra Seeling and her co-founders have a passion for indie films and made the festival’s mission about bridging cultures. “I myself was born in Germany and grew up in Spain and now I live in the United States. My two co-founders are from Egypt and Dubai so we wanted to create an event that could travel all around the globe to give the films a bigger audience. Each movie that wins in Hollywood moves to Spain. The movies that win in Spain move to Dubai. So we really have this huge global community that we are building and the response has been fantastic,” stated Seeling.
Many rising star’s and hot celebrities appear in the festival’s films such as Adam Brody (The OC, Burning Love) in Double or Nothing and Carlos Pratts (FX’s The Bridge) in Coyote. Coyote which was written and directed by Joe Eddy, is a dramedy film about an aimless, young social misfit who ends up befriending an illegal Mexican laborer. He finds out that his mother and sister are being held captive across the border for ransom money. So they hatch a plan to get them back. This lighter take on dark subject matter garnered Jan Broberg (Everwood, Iron Man 3) the Best Supporting Actress award as well as the award for Best Ensemble Cast.
EIFF will return to LA next year even bigger and better. In the meantime be sure to check out the list of films that were screened and be on the lookout for talent that is on the cusp of being famous. By next year they may be hot celebrities!
Festival awards include:
Best Feature Film: “XINGU”
Best Short Film: “That Wasn’t Me”
Best Feature Documentary: “BARZAN”
Best Short Documentary: “Not Anymore, A Story of a Revolution”
Best Student Short Film “Try Outs”
Best Actor Feature Film: “Xingu, Joao Miguel”
Best Actor Short Film: “Buzkashi Boys, Fawad Mohammadi”
Best Actor Short Film: “Buzkashi Boys, Jawanmard Paiz”
Best Actress Short Film: “Robyn O. (14), Zoë Thielemans
Best Supporting Actress: “Coyote” Jan Broberg
Best Screenplay: Bela Wolf (She was left alone)
Best Ensemble cast: Coyote
CLICK HERE for EIFF’s official website.