18-Year-Old High School Student Launches First Ever Laguna Film Fest

Over the weekend, I was invited to attend the 1st Annual Laguna Film Festival, which was launched by 18-year-old Austin Fickman, son of one of the festival’s judges and sponsors, Andy Fickman of Oops Doughnuts Productions. Fickman (the younger) has been a film nerd all of his life and had the most popular film club at his high school before launching the festival, which is designed to showcase emerging filmmakers from all over the world.

The judges for the films were industry professionals, like agents, producers, casting directors, and writers. Some of them spoke at the festival’s panel on “Hollywood Today.” The film’s opening night featured a short short starring Bryce Dallas Howard called Solemates. A doc short called Curt, which will be contending for Oscar short, about a 50 year-old surfer diagnosed with autism.

Dreamworks has a new short called Taking Flight, directed by Brandon Oldenberg who won the Oscar two years ago for The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore, and Winter Light, directed by Julian Higgins. The opening night was the biggest event, followed by a full day of screenings for the selected shorts, which were then voted on by audience participants.

One of the subjects at the Hollywood Today panel was whether VOD would overtake theatrical release films that were not tent poles necessarily but closer to the ground human stories. It’s easy to be cynical about how things are going in Hollywood, but the fact that an 18 year-old wanted to start a film festival to foster up-and-coming talent is a good sign that all hope is not lost.

Of the films I saw, which was half of the drama shorts and the animated shorts – none of which are competing for Oscars – just a quick shout out to the two best ones. Cry of the Fox, Directed by Jason Ronzani and Ning Xu is just an exceptional work of claymation and stop motion animation and had all of the necessary elements to be a good short – story, suspense, emotional impact, plus great animation. The other one was called Unspoken, directed by Eric Otten. This is a very well written, acted and directed short that tells a complete story with a deaf woman caring for her mother who has early onset dementia or Alzheimer’s. There is so much going on in such a short amount of time I figure this Eric Otten is going places.

For more info on the Laguna Fest, visit the website.