Projects from Canadian directors Kelly Fyffe-Marshall, Alexander Farah and Nicole Dorsey won prizes at the South by Southwest (SXSW) Film Festival.

Brampton, Ont.-based Fyffe-Marshall’s short OMI (20th Century Digital, Aligned & Capture) won Special Jury Recognition for Powerful “Short Trip,” with the jury calling it an “a grounded supernatural story that is provocative, mysterious and unforgettable.” The thriller (pictured), about a fishing trip between a boy and his father, was directed by Fyffe-Marshall and co-written by her and 10 to Watch alum Tamar Bird, who produced.

Fyffe-Marshall’s last short, Black Bodies, made a splash by winning a Canadian Screen Award and making the Toronto International Film Festival’s Canada’s Top Ten list.

Vancouver-based Farah took a Short Film Grand Jury Award for directing the music video for Canadian singer Desiree Dawson’s Meet You At the Light, a coproduction between Wallop Film and Dunya Media, produced by Kashif Pasta and Shyam Valera. Katherine Koniecki and Martin Glegg were executive producers on the project, which won a grant from the Music Video Production (MVP) Project and was shortlisted for the Prism Prize.

Meet You At the Light depicts the relationship between a young woman and her father, played by real-life father-daughter duo Ishaval Gill and Kamaldevinder Gill. It beat out music videos from artists including Tyler, the Creator, Dua Lipa and Lil Nas X. “Without a single detail wasted, we were all moved to tears by this powerful story from a first-time music video director,” said the SXSW jury in a statement.

Dorsey, who splits her time between Toronto and L.A., won in the Episodic Pilot Competition for directing Something Undone, written by Michael Musi and Madison Walsh, and produced by Max Topplin and Jordan Hayes (4AM Film Studios).  The SXSW jury praised the project for “cleverly rethinking and repurposing oft-used elements of mystery/horror storytelling.”

Something Undone also won Best Digital Series at Series Mania 2021. The 6 x 10-minute second season, set in “a dangerously unwelcoming Newfoundland,” debuts Friday (March 25) on CBC Gem.

Photo credit: Soof Shaheen