Although the 2013 edition of the Lone Star Film Festival in Fort Worth was top heavy with some major fall releases, the joy of any film festival is discovering previously unknown movies.
Following a record-setting attendance year, the festival has announced the names of its four jury competition winners: Jesus Beltran's Twenty Bucks (short film), Andrew Moir's Just As I Remember (student short film), Sarah McCarthy's The Dark Matter of Love (documentary feature) and Nathan Nicholovitch's Casa Nostra (narrative feature).
All of the winning films deal with family in one way or another. Nicholovitch was making his directorial debut with Casa Nostra, which follows three siblings who rediscover each other after traveling to Paris to see their dying father. McCarthy's The Dark Matter of Love tackled the difficulty both adoptive children and the families they join can have in adapting to an unfamiliar situation.
Moir's Just As I Remember is an intensely personal look at ALS, or Lou Gehrig's Disease, as he remembers his father and talks with another man stricken with the disease. And Beltran's Twenty Bucks focuses on a single father trying to raise his daughter, only to get sidetracked by a confrontation with a neighbor.
Both feature film winners will receive $2,500, while the short film winners will get $500 each. The feature winners will also be paired with a leader in the film industry to help them try to market and distribute their films, which were both making their Southwest premiere at the Lone Star Film Festival.
Sarah McCarthy's The Dark Matter of Love won the documentary feature competition at the 2013 Lone Star Film Festival.
