"For the first time Foreign Film is not just an honorary category, as it
has been for the past 31 years," said event co-presenter,
"Alias" actress Jennifer Garner. "The Student Award executive
committee felt with all the quality work they were seeing each year from the
schools outside America, it was about time to make to make Foreign Film a
regular category." Garner noted that foreign students submitted 52 films
from 32 different countries this year, and the winner of the new foreign prize
was Norway's Hallvar Witzo, director of "Tuba Atlantic."
Even one of
the top Hollywood-produced winners, narrative-category gold medalist
"Thief," had a foreign flair. It spun around a young Saddam Hussein,
was set in Iraq and in Iraqi-Arabic with subtitles. "This is just an
incredible ride, a thrill ride," "Thief" director Julian Higgins
said in a pre-ceremony interview Saturday. Higgins, a graduate of the American
Film Institute, added, "We do have a mantel, for once in my apartment. So,
that might be the choice. But, you'll never know. I mean, I hear these are
people that win the Oscars and they put it in their closet or in their office
or something, I've never thought about it before. So, I guess I should start
thinking."
Other gold medal winners included New York director Zach Hyer's
"Correspondence" in the animation category and Chicago-based Wonjung
Bae's "Vera Klement: Blunt Edge" in the documentary category.
