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AWFJ EDA Awards @ Whistler Film Festival 2024 – Jennifer Merin reports

Jennifer Merin , , , , , ,
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The Alliance of Women Film Journalists and Whistler Film Festival are proud to announce the winners of the AWFJ EDA Awards for Best Female-Directed Feature and Best Female-Directed Short at Whistler Film Festival 2024. The EDA Award winners were announced at the Whistler Film Festival awards ceremony on Sunday, December 8, 2024.

This is the twelfth consecutive year of the partnership between AWFJ and WFF to recognize and honor the work of female filmmakers whose work is screened at the festival. This year AWFJ EDA Awards were presented in two categories: Best Female-Directed Feature and Best Female-Directed Short. WFF nominated five feature length films and six short films for consideration by AWFJ’s jurors, all of whom are members of the Alliance of Women Film Journalists.

BEST FEMALE-DIRECTED FEATURE

This year, the EDA Award for Best Female-Directed Feature goes to Bob Trevino Likes It, filmmaker Tracie Laymon’s semi-autobiographical narrative centering on a people-pleasing young woman who, while searching for her estranged father online, unexpectedly forms a close bond with a grieving, childless man, with the same name as her father, on Facebook.

Still from BOB TREVINO LIKES IT

In the jury statement, the three-member panel said that “Tracie Laymon’s deftly directed and well-paced narrative about chosen families with a unique father-daughter perspective that shows how the right connections can help broken people become whole. Barbie Ferreira and John Leguizamo are fantastic in this gentle, heartfelt coming-of-age story based on a real-life and very unusual Facebook friendship. Great supporting performances and characters too. Tracie Laymon writes and directs with humor without getting into saccharine territory; her voice clearly comes through on screen and we heartily applaud her and Bob Trevino Likes It.”

The AWFJ jurors for Best Female-Directed Feature were Valerie Kalfrin, Jennifer Merin (Chair) and Rachel West

Other films nominees for the Best emale-directed Eda Award were: Zoe Eisenberg’s Chaperone, Anne McCabe’s Fidel Ghorm (Blue Fiddle), Kourtney Roy’s Kryptic and Meryam Joobeur’s Who Do I Belong To.

BEST FEMALE-DIRECTED SHORT

The 2024 winner of the EDA Award for Best Female-Directed Short is Have I Swallowed Your Dreams, directed by Clara Chan. The animated film is a poetic conversation between an immigrant daughter and her mother about sacrifices and dreams.

Still from HAVE I SWALLOWED YOUR DREAMS

According to the three-member jury panel’s statement, “This is such an endearing film, with exquisite animation, about mothers and daughters and the willingly-made sacrifices of parenthood. A woman and her mother meet for a cup of tea, and the daughter wonders if she ‘swallowed’ her mother’s dreams just by being born. When it’s the mother’s turn to talk about their relationship, she expresses the absolute wonder of child bearing and the adventure that she feels began at the moment when her daughter was born. The animation is an exhilarating kaleidoscope of color and joyous images. Clara Chan’s own family was the inspiration for a universal tale about the sacrifices parents make on behalf of their children. This film pops with life — just a pleasure to look at.”

AWFJ members serving on the jury for Best Female-Directed Short were Marina Antunes (Chair), Liz Braun and Leslie Combemale

Additional nominees for the EDA Award or Best Female-Directed Short included: Jaime Leigh Gianopoulos’ Ask The Plantain, Chloe Caudillo’s Development, Amélie Hardy’s Hello Stranger, Subarna Dash’s The Girl Who Lived in the Loo and Véronique Paquette’s Loca.

A VERY COOL PARTNERSHIP

Whistler Film Festival, known as ‘Canada’s coolest film fest’, has been championing women in film since its inception in 2001. In addition to programming films directed by women, the festival holds an annual Women on Top event, gathering leading women in film from around the world to meet, greet and network with each other. Additionally, the festival’s annual presentation of Women In the Director’s Chair and Women in Film & Television Vancouver mentorship programs connect up and coming female film directors to industry moguls and the methodology they recommend for success.

For more information on WFF and the nominated films, visit whistlerfilmfestival.com.

For more information on AWFJ’s EDA Awards, click here.

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Jennifer Merin

Jennifer Merin is the Film Critic for Womens eNews and contributes the CINEMA CITIZEN blog for and is managing editor for AWFJ.org, the online magazine of the Alliance of Women Film Journalists, of which she is President. She has served as a regular critic and film-related interviewer for The New York Press and About.com. She has written about entertainment for USA Today, The L.A. Times, US Magazine, Ms. Magazine, Endless Vacation Magazine, NY Daily News, New York Post, SoHo News and other publications. After receiving her MFA from Tisch School of the Arts (Grad Acting), Jennifer performed at the O'Neill Theater Center's Playwrights Conference, Long Wharf Theater, American Place Theatre and LaMamma, where she worked with renown Japanese director, Shuji Terayama. She subsequently joined Terayama's theater company in Tokyo, where she also acted in films. Her journalism career began when she was asked to write about Terayama for The Drama Review. She became a regular contributor to the Christian Science Monitor after writing an article about Marketta Kimbrell's Theater For The Forgotten, with which she was performing at the time. She was an O'Neill Theater Center National Critics' Institute Fellow, and then became the institute's Coordinator. While teaching at the Universities of Wisconsin and Rhode Island, she wrote "A Directory of Festivals of Theater, Dance and Folklore Around the World," published by the International Theater Institute. Denmark's Odin Teatret's director, Eugenio Barba, wrote his manifesto in the form of a letter to "Dear Jennifer Merin," which has been published around the world, in languages as diverse as Farsi and Romanian. Jennifer's culturally-oriented travel column began in the LA Times in 1984, then moved to The Associated Press, LA Times Syndicate, Tribune Media, Creators Syndicate and Arcamax Publishing. She's been news writer/editor for ABC Radio Networks, on-air reporter for NBC, CBS Radio and for Westwood One's America In the Morning. She is a member of the Critics Choice Association in the Film, Documentary and TV branches and a voting member of the Black Reel Awards. For her AWFJ archive, type "Jennifer Merin" in the Search Box (upper right corner of screen).