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After a close tally, two Audience Awards were handed out, the first to Iman Zawahry’s groundbreaking Americanish (USA, 2021) a pioneering romantic comedy made predominantly by and about American Muslim women. One of the films in NYAFF’s inaugural Asian American Focus section, it was shot in Jackson Heights, Queens, and the audience turnout was by far the largest during the festival.
The other Audience Award winner was Takahide Hori’s Junk Head (Japan, 2021) , a dystopian sci-fi stop-motion masterwork that follows the eponymous protagonist on a series of shape-changing adventures after he’s sent deep underground to help save mankind. The self-trained director spent seven years creating every aspect of the film almost entirely by himself.
The Uncaged Award for best feature went to
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Anima
莫爾道嘎
Set in Inner Mongolia in the 1980s, when China launched economic development programs that resulted in widespread clear-cutting (essentially mass destruction by chainsaw), this is a breathtakingly beautiful debut with a romance at its heart and an environmental message in its soul.
Sorry to have missed that, and AMERICANISH; and there were some others I'm sorry to have missed. I'll put my comments on the films I saw and liked below.