150 filmmakers and their supporters packed the Harbour Lights Picturehouse to watch the best films from this year's entrants in an award ceremony hosted by BBC South's Stuart Norval.  | | Mark Kermode presenting the awards |
Film critic and broadcaster Mark Kermode chose the best film from a shortlist in each category: Factual, Comedy, Animation and Drama. At the ceremony he presented a certificate to each winner before their film was shown on the big screen. Lucy Wallace topped the hard-fought Best Drama category for Exit, a creepy period drama for which she managed to get John Hurt to take a starring role:  | | The Exit production team |
"I'm very surprised! It's just great - everyone worked really hard on it and it's fantastic it has been recognised." Jon Haydon Parker won Best Arts and Factual with his Salvation at the Slabs documentary filmed as a final year project at Southampton Institute - about a trailer park in the Californian desert:  | | Mark presenting at last year's ceremony |
"It's given the film wings - with winning this award we're going to go on to send the film to film festivals to try and get it shown more. I've still got nine hours of footage, with funding we'd like to edit more material and extend it to an hour. And we're going to carry on working with City Eye and making more films in the South." Best Comedy award went to Paul Ralph for Aardvark and the award for Best Animation went to Damien Hook for East End Zombies which he produced while studying at the National Centre for Computer Animation, at Bournemouth University.  | | Paul Ralph receiving his award |
For judge Mark Kermode, the festival showed the best the region's young film-makers had to offer: "What was amazing was that the standard was so high - each one of the shortlisted entries we had was unique and experimental." The Festival is now in its third year, produced in partnership with local media group, City Eye and Harbour Lights Picturehouse. | 
