The Student Academy Awards took place Monday night in London’s Leicester Square with gold, silver and bronze placements awarded to students after entries from 738 universities worldwide.
The night’s category presenters included The Wild Robot writer and director Chris Sanders and Saturday Night co-writer and director and Academy governor Jason Reitman.
In the narrative category, the gold placement went to Pavel Sýkora & Viktor Horák from Filmová Akademie Miroslava Ondříčka v Písku, Czech Republic, for The Compatriot. Jens Kevin Georg from Film University Babelsberg Konrad Wolf, Germany won silver with Crust, and Robin Wang of the University of Southern California claimed bronze with Neither Donkey nor Horse.
School of Visual Arts student Hannah Rafkin won the gold placement in the documentary category for Keeper, followed by Chapman University’s Aaron Johnson with The 17% and Rishabh Raj Jain from New York University, who was awarded bronze for A Dream Called Khushi (Happiness).
The gold award for animation went to Florian Maurice, Maxime Foltzer & Estelle Bonnardel of France’s MoPA 3D Animation School for their project Au Revoir Mon Monde. The silver placement was awarded to Japanese student Kei Kanamori from the Digital Hollywood University for Origami, and Spencer Baird of Brigham Young University earned bronze with Student Accomplice.
For the prizes in the alternative/experimental category, Birdy Wei-Ting Hung from San Francisco State University took home gold for A Bright Summer Day for the Lady Avengers, Dori Walker from Brown won silver for In Living Memory, and Bronze went to Akshit Kumar’s bonVoyage pour monVoyage, from the National Institute of Design in India.
First-time honors go to National Institute of Design (India), Digital Hollywood University (Japan) and Filmová Akademie Miroslava Ondříčka v Písku (Czech Republic).
All Student Academy Award-winning films are eligible to compete for the 97th Oscars in the animated short film, live action short film or documentary short film category.
