AFTRS alumni and a current student make up the majority of this year’s Lexus Australia Short Film Fellowship recipients at the Sydney Film Festival.
Award-winning Sydney-based filmmaker Melissa Anastasi (Graduate Diploma in Directing, 2012), Melbourne-based freelance director and editor Jamieson Pearce (Graduate Diploma in Directing, 2014), plus the prolific duo of current student Nathan Mewett (Master of Arts Screen: Screenwriting, 2018) and Curtis Taylor, will each receive a $50,000 grant for their respective teams to produce a short film to premiere at next year’s festival. Also selected was Victorian College of the Arts graduate Sunday Emerson Gullifer.
Previously, Mewett and Taylor co-wrote and directed the short film Yulubidyi – Until the End, which screened at this year’s festival.
Recipients were selected by an industry jury, headed by chair and Janet King star Marta Dusseldorp, along with SFF director Nashen Moodley, Lexus Australia senior manager sales and marketing Vin Naidoo, Bunya Productions’ Greer Simpkin, and Australian Directors’ Guild president and AFTRS alumna Samantha Lang (Bachelor of Arts Directing, 1994).
Dusseldorp called the selected projects “strong, unique stories investigating identity, love, family, relationships and the human experience. We cannot wait to see them at the Sydney Film Festival in 2019.” Congratulations to the filmmakers and their teams.