Student Academy Awards winners honored, presented by Spike Lee, Lulu Wang and more

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences today will honor 18 student winners from colleges and universities around the world at the 47th Student Academy Awards ceremony, to be held virtually for the first time. 

The Gold, Silver and Bronze Medal awards will be announced and presented by experimental filmmaker Shunsaku Hayashi, Oscar-winning animator Glen Keane, Oscar-winning filmmaker and 1983 Student Academy Award winner Spike Lee, and filmmakers Dawn Porter and Lulu Wang and hosted by actor-director Eugenio Derbez, the ceremony is available now on StudentAcademyAwards.org. 

The 2020 Student Academy Award medalists are:

Alternative/Experimental (Domestic and International Film Schools)
Gold: “Simulacra,” Curry Sicong Tian, University of Southern California

Animation (Domestic Film Schools)
Gold: “Ciervo,” Pilar Garcia-Fernandezsesma, Rhode Island School of Design
Silver: “Mime Your Manners,” Kate Namowicz and Skyler Porras, Ringling College of Art & Design
Bronze: “Hamsa,” Daniela Dwek, Maya Mendonca and Chrisy Baek, School of Visual Arts

Animation (International Film Schools)
Gold: “The Beauty,” Pascal Schelbli, Filmakademie Baden-Württemberg (Germany)

Documentary (Domestic Film Schools)
Gold: “Unfinished Lives,” Yucong Chen, University of Southern California 
Silver: “The Dope Years: The Story of Latasha Harlins,” Allison A. Waite, University of Southern California
Bronze: “Making Waves,” Laura Zéphirin, New York University

Documentary (International Film Schools)
Gold: “Dear Father…,” Maren Klakegg, Westerdals Institute of Film and Media, Kristiania University College (Norway) 

Narrative (Domestic Film Schools)
Gold: “Umama,” Talia Smith, New York University
Silver: “Bittu,” Karishma Dube, New York University
Bronze: “Sweet Potatoes,” Rommel Villa Barriga, University of Southern California

Narrative (International Film Schools)
Gold: “My Dear Corpses,” German Golub, Baltic Film & Media School, Tallinn University (Estonia) 
Silver: “Crescendo,” Percival Argüero Mendoza, Centro de Capacitación Cinematográfica (Mexico)
Bronze: “I Was Still There When You Left Me,” Marie Mc Court, Institut des Arts de Diffusion (Belgium) 

All Student Academy Award-winning films are eligible to compete for 2020 Oscars in the Animated Short Film, Live Action Short Film or Documentary Short Subject category.  Past winners have gone on to receive 64 Oscar nominations and have won or shared 13 awards. 

The Student Academy Awards were established in 1972 to provide a platform for emerging global talent by creating opportunities within the industry to showcase their work.  The 2020 winners join the ranks of such past Student Academy Award winners as Patricia Cardoso, Pete Docter, Cary Fukunaga, Spike Lee, Trey Parker, Patricia Riggen and Robert Zemeckis.  For more information about the Student Academy Awards and this year’s winners and presenters, visit StudentAcademyAwards.org.

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Erik Anderson

Erik Anderson is the founder/owner and Editor-in-Chief of AwardsWatch and has always loved all things Oscar, having watched the Academy Awards since he was in single digits; making lists, rankings and predictions throughout the show. This led him down the path to obsessing about awards. Much later, he found himself in film school and the film forums of GoldDerby, and then migrated over to the former Oscarwatch (now AwardsDaily), before breaking off to create AwardsWatch in 2013.

He is a Rotten Tomatoes-approved critic, accredited by the Cannes Film Festival, Telluride Film Festival, Toronto International Film Festival and more, is a member of the International Cinephile Society (ICS), The Society of LGBTQ Entertainment Critics (GALECA), Hollywood Critics Association (HCA) and the International Press Academy. Among his many achieved goals with AwardsWatch, he has given a platform to underrepresented writers and critics and supplied them with access to film festivals and the industry and calls the Bay Area his home where he lives with his husband and son.

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