The Harold Greenberg Fund has launched a $1,000 comedic short film award to be handed out at the upcoming Just For Laughs Montreal Comedy Festival in July.

The prize was created to support Canadian comedic short filmmakers, the fund’s English-language program president John Galway tells Playback Daily.

Galway adds that the prize coincides with the fund’s recently created Short Film Program, a partnership with The Movie Network to support emerging filmmakers with short films that could become debut feature films.

“It’s to foster and help out young comedic talents so that hopefully they continue to grow within the Canadian industry and maybe they also have success elsewhere – but that they make features and continue to work and be active in the Canadian side of the business,” Galway explains.

“It’s certainly an area that we can have more success in,” he adds.

The award winner will be selected from the films that screen at this year’s Just For Laughs comedy festival, which is set to run July 12 to July 29.