Josh Radnor’s happythankyoumoreplease captured the Audience Favorite Award for Best Narrative Feature for the recently-wrapped, and record-setting, 2010 Virginia Film Festival. Radnor’s happythankyoumoreplease also earned the Audience Award at this year’s Sundance Film Festival.
In happythankyoumoreplease “Six New Yorkers juggle love, friendship, and the keenly challenging specter of adulthood. Sam Wexler is a struggling writer who’s having a particularly bad day. When a young boy gets separated from his family on the subway, Sam makes the questionable decision to bring the child back to his apartment and thus begins a rewarding, yet complicated, friendship. Sam’s life revolves around his friends—Annie, whose self-image keeps her from commitment; Charlie and Mary Catherine, a couple whose possible move to Los Angeles tests their relationship; and Mississippi, a cabaret singer who catches Sam’s eye.
Written, directed, and starring Josh Radnor (CBS’s How I Met Your Mother), happythankyoumoreplease boasts a wryly funny script and engaging performances from its ensemble cast. With honesty and humor, Radnor captures a generational moment—young people on the cusp of truly growing up, struggling for connection, and hoping to define what it means to love and be loved.”
Earning the Audience Favorite Award in the documentary category at the Virginia Film Festival was Stanley Nelson’s powerful documentary Freedom Riders, which showcases the uncommon bravery of the more than 400 Americans who stood up to racial intolerance in the early 1960’s by riding mass transit in the deep South, in direct defiance of the laws of the day.
The 2010 Virginia Film Festival Audience Favorite Award winner for Best Short Narrative was Prism, made by University of Virginia students Alexandra Miller, Debra Cohen and Dan Quinn. The winner for Best Short Documentary was That World is Gone: Race and Displacement in a Southern Town. Directed by Hannah Brown Ayers and Lance Warren, the film explores the nearly-forgotten history of Charlottesville’s largest African-American neighborhood, Vinegar Hill.
The winner of the 2010 Programmers Award for Best Narrative Feature was Kawasaki’s Rose, a film by Czech filmmaker Jan Hrebejk that tells the tale of a scientist whose complicated past is on the verge of being exposed just as he is to be awarded for extraordinary achievements in his field.
The Programmers Award for Best Documentary went to Louder Than a Bomb, a powerful story from directors Greg Jacobs and John Siskel about a group of inner-city Chicago teens preparing to compete in the world’s largest youth poetry slam. An inspirational tale of passion, competition, teamwork and trust, the film has been hailed throughout the festival circuit this year, capturing top documentary honors at the Chicago and Austin Film Festivals.
Winning the 2010 Programmers Award for Best Short Narrative was Kamal John Iskander’s Jesus Comes To Town; and earning top honors in the Best Short Documentary category was The Enduring Legacy of Pocahantas Island, a history of one of the oldest African American communities in the country, made by students at Virginia State University overseen by noted actor/director Tim Reid.
The full listing of the Virginia Film Festival’s Audience and Programmers Awards is below:
Audience Favorite – Narrative
winner: happythankyoumoreplease
Audience Favorite – Documentary
winner: Freedom Riders
Audience Favorite – Short Narrative
winner: Prism
Audience Favorite – Short Documentary
winner: That World is Gone: Race and Displacement in a Southern Town
Programmers Award – Narrative
winner: Kawasaki’s Rose
Programmers Award – Documentary
winner: Louder Than a Bomb
Programmers Award – Short Narrative
winner: Jesus Comes to Town
Programmers Award – Short Documentary
winner: The Enduring Legacy of Pocahontas Island
source: VFF