Steen Agro's Shut Up And Shoot Me won the AFI Dallas International Film Festival's Target narrative feature award while Socheata Poeuv's New Year Baby took corresponding documentary honours.

The HDNet Award for the best feature shot in HD went to Rob Stewart's documentary Sharkwater.

Additional Awards went to Eric Chaikin's A Lawyer Walks Into A Bar in the Texas Competition - with a special jury prize for Alyson Shelton's Eve Of Understanding - as well as Alex Weil's One Rat Short in the animation competition and Calvin Reeder's Little Farm in the shorts category.

Audiences voted festival opener Steven Sawalich's Music Within the winner of the narrative feature film contest and Logan Smalley's Darius Goes West: The Roll Of His Life won the documentary category. Harry Kellerman's The Little Gorilla won the shorts section.

'After going through more than 1,200 submissions for the festival and then making the difficult decisions to cut that down to 190 films in the festival itself, our jurors had an unenviable task to then choose just one winner in each of these categories,' AFI Dallas director of programming James Faust said.

'But they were somehow able to do that and we are very proud of not just the winners in each of these categories, but all of the films that were part of our inaugural festival.'

The festival opened on Mar 22 with Music Within and closed on Mar 31 with Sarah Polley's drama Away From Her.