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Nicolas Ménard’s ‘Loop Ring Chop Drink’ Wins Top Animation Prize at 2015 Encounters Fest

Nina Gantz’s ‘Edmond’ wins the NextGen Skills Academy Best of British Award, and ‘I Got This’ by Tom Gran & Madeline Grossi receives the 2015 Anijam Award.

The Brief Encounters Short Film Festival, the U.K.’s leading short film and animation festival, has wrapped its 2015 edition, which ran September 15-20 in Bristol.

Nexus director Nicolas Ménard won the Animated Grand Prix for his short film, Loop Ring Chop Drink. Billed as “the mundane story of a heartbroken man, an online gambling addict, an alcoholic kleptomaniac, and an anxious loner living in the same apartment building,” the 2D animated short features a selection of abstract paintings by Samuel Jacques. Directed, designed and animated by Ménard, with sound and music by Rich Vreeland, Loop Ring Chop Drink also received the Walt Disney Prize for Best Graduate Animation and the Craft Award for Design at this month’s Ottawa International Animation Festival, and was named Best Student Film at Belgium’s Festival Anima in February.

Other animation winners included the U.K.s Edmond by Nina Gantz, which won the NextGen Skills Academy Best of British Award, and I Got This by Tom Gran & Madeline Grossi, which received the 2015 Anijam Award.

The complete list of winners is shown below:

2015 AWARD WINNERS

MAIN AWARDS:

Brief Grand Prix
Blood Below the Skin – Jennifer Reeder (United States)

Animated Grand Prix
Loop Ring Chop Drink – Nicolas Ménard (United Kingdom)

Honorable mention: Maku – Yoriko Mizushiri (Japan)

UWE European New Talent Short Film Award
Discipline – Christophe M. Saber (Switzerland)

Honorable mention: Carapace – Flora Molinie (France)

UWE European New Talent Animation Award
My Dad – Marcus Armitage (United Kingdom)

Honorable mention: What I Forgot To Say – Patrick Buhr (Germany)

Chris Collins Best of British Award – Live Action
Over – Jörn Threlfall (United Kingdom)

NextGen Skills Academy Best of British Award – Animation
Edmond – Nina Gantz (United Kingdom)

Honorable mention: Manoman – Simon Cartwright (United Kingdom)

DepicT! Main Award
Hand Maid – Karim Souissi, Robin Wijnhold & Reda Zniber (Morocco)

DepicT! British Special Mention Award
If the Cuckoo Don’t Crow – Steve Kirby (United Kingdom)

Commendation: Don’t Feed the Ducks – Tom Edmonson (United Kingdom)

DepicT! Royal Photographic Society Cinematography Award
The Factory – Thomas Phelan, George Lewis, Jack O’Dowd, James Hambleton-Plumb & Isaac Jack McCardle (United Kingdom)

DepicT! Random Acts Special Mention Award
Conformity Juice – Rosa Fisher (United Kingdom)

Commendation: A2042 – David Castro González (Spain)

DepicT! Shooting People Audience Award
Hand Maid – Karim Souissi, Robin Wijnhold & Reda Zniber (Morocco)

EFA Nomination
Over – Jörn Trelfall (United Kingdom)

MIXED AWARDS:

Music Video Award
Cookie-Tin Banjo – Peter Baynton (United Kingdom, United States)

Documentary Award
The Atom Station – Nick Jordan (United Kingdom)

Honorable mention: Starting Point – Michal Szczesniak – Poland)

Children’s Award
Giovanni and the Water Ballet – Astrid Bussnik (Netherlands)

Audience Award
Pa – Kapitolina Tcvetkova Plotnikova (Russian Federation, United Kingdom)

Anijam Award
I Got This – Tom Gran & Madeline Grossi (United Kingdom)

Source: Brief Encounters Short Film Festival

Jennifer Wolfe's picture

Formerly Editor-in-Chief of Animation World Network, Jennifer Wolfe has worked in the Media & Entertainment industry as a writer and PR professional since 2003.