A grim and suspenseful portrait of war has won the major award at the Shorts Film Festival for Flinders graduate Anthony Maras.
The Palace, a film that used real locations in its depiction of the Turkish invasion of Cyprus in 1974, has already won awards at the Sydney, Adelaide, and Melbourne film festivals and the Australian Academy of Cinema and Television Arts Awards. It has had international attention too, winning Best Short Fiction Film and Best Director at the 2012 Beverly Hills Film Festival.
The film, which describes the fate of a young Cypriot family caught up in the conflict, was written and directed by Mr Maras, who is a law graduate. The Gold Shorts Award includes a trip to the 2012 Cannes Film Festival.
Another former Flinders student, Madeleine Parry, received the Silver Shorts award for Murder Mouth, a documentary about a young woman confronting the killing of animals that attends her meat-eating diet.
BA graduate Storm Ashwood received a merit award for directing Paper Planes, as did graduate and former staff member Shane McNeil, who wrote and co-directed The Moment with Troy Bellchambers.
The Adelaide-based Shorts festival, which is the only national competition dedicated to short films, received 60 entries across all genres this year. Flinders University is a sponsor of the festival.