Canada’s Atlantic Film Festival announced its award winners on Saturday (Sept 24) at a reception in Halifax, Nova Scotia marking the end of the event’s thirty-first annual run.

The best feature prize of $10,000 in services went to Michael Melski’s Charlie Zone, with Melski also taking the award for outstanding direction. The best short award ($3,000 in film stock) was won by Kenneth J Harvey’s I’m 14 and I Hate The World.

Tarek Abouamin’s 18 Days won the Rex Tasker Documentary Award, Thom Fitzgerald’s Cloudburst took the Michael Weir Award for Best Original Screenplay and Christopher Ball won the Ed Higginson Cinematography Award for his work on Charlie Zone.

Ruth Lawrence from Clipper Gold won the Joan Orenstein Award for Outstanding Performance by an Actress and Charlie Zone’s Glen Gould won the David Renton Award for Outstanding Performance by an Actor.

The Script Development Award ($10,000 in development financing from Astral’s Harold Greenberg Fund) went to Iain MacLeod’s Soccer Punch.

Jean Marc Vallee’s Café de Flore was named best Canadian feature, taking a $10,000 service package prize, and Wild Life, from Amanda Forbis and Wendy Tilby, was named best Canadian short (with a $5,000 service package prize).

The First Feature Project award, consisting of $105,000 of production financing for a first feature length film, went to Richard MacQueen and Michael Ray Fox.

The CBC Pioneer Award went to David MacLeod of Big Motion Pictures.