Awards

Join the Woodstock Film Festival as we celebrate our Honorees and Award recipients. Awards for Honorary Trailblazer, Honorary Fiercely Independent, Maverick and Best: Narrative Feature, Documentary Feature, Ultra Indie, Animation, Short Narrative, Short Documentary, and Student Short.

HONORARY FIERCELY INDEPENDENT ELIZA HITTMAN

Award-winning filmmaker Eliza Hittman’s most recent feature, Never Rarely Sometimes Always, won the Silver Bear in the International Competition at the 2020 Berlin Film Festival, was nominated for seven Independent Spirit Awards, and won a New York Critics Circle Award for Best Screenplay and Best Actress. Her film Beach Rats won the Directing Award at the 2017 Sundance Film Festival, premiered internationally at Locarno in the Golden Leopard Competition, and was the Centerpiece Film at New Directors / New Films. It won the Artios Award for Outstanding Achievement in Casting, Outstanding Screenwriting in a U.S. Feature at Outfest, and the London Critics’ Circle Film Award for Young British/Irish Performer of the Year. Hittman earned an MFA from California Institute of the Arts, garnered a Guggenheim Fellowship, and is currently an Assistant Professor of Film/Video at Pratt Institute.

2021 HONORARY MAVERICK REWARD RECEPIENT ROGER ROSS WILLIAMS

Roger Ross Williams is an Oscar and Emmy award-winning director, producer, and writer and the first African American director to win an Academy Award ®, with his film Music By Prudence. Beautiful, Uplifting, Extraordinary, Triumphant, Rich with insight, Searing, Remarkable, and Inspirational are accolades Williams’ films have received from the New York Times, Vanity Fair, Hollywood Reporter, Variety, Forbes, Stephen Colbert, and Entertainment Weekly. In 2016, Williams was elected to the Board of Governors of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences where he represents the Documentary Branch. He currently serves on the Academy’s Equity and Inclusion Committee and he is also Chair of the Documentary Diversity Committee. Williams serves on the advisory board of the Full Frame Film Festival, and the boards of Docubox Kenya, None On Record, and the Zeitz Museum Of Contemporary Art Africa. Williams has directed a number of acclaimed films, including Academy Award-nominated and Emmy-winning Life, Animated, Academy Award-shortlisted and Prime-time Emmy-winning The Apollo, Academy Award-shortlisted God Loves Uganda, and Emmy-nominated and Webby-winning VR documentary Traveling While Black. Williams is currently producing and EPing numerous projects HONORARY TRAILBLAZER TOM QUINN

Pioneering film distributor Tom Quinn co-founded, in 2017, the distribution label NEON, known for pushing boundaries and taking creative risks with such films as Apollo 11 (the world’s highest grossing documentary), Three Identical Strangers (winner of Sundance Special Jury Award for Storytelling), award-winning I, Tonya, and Bong Joon-Ho’s runaway hit Parasite (the first non-English language film to claim best picture at the Academy Awards). Neon partnered with Direct Relief for its anthology feature, The Year of The Everlasting Storm, donating to the humanitarian organization’s Covid-19 relief efforts. NEON films that Quinn helped shepherd include Ingrid Goes West, Snowpiercer, Bachelorette, Honeyland, Portrait of a Lady on Fire, Amazing Grace, and Oscar winners 20 Feet from Stardom and Citizenfour. Quinn acquired, produced and distributed over 200 films spanning a 20-year career, and launched two distribution labels: the boutique label RADiUS and the groundbreaking genre label Magnet. He played a key role in pioneering the use of VOD as Senior Vice President at Magnolia Pictures, and as VP of Acquisitions at Samuel Goldwyn, he was responsible for Super Size Me.

and series with his production company One Story Up, which serves to uplift the voices of underrepresented storytellers. Recent productions include a screen adaptation of Ta-Nehisi Coates’ bestseller, Between the World and Me; an untitled Netflix feature documentary about civil rights lawyer Ben Crump; One Story Up, a short film series directed by BIPOC filmmakers with Topic and First Look Media; a feature documentary Master of Light, about a formerly incarcerated painter; a feature film about the pop sensation TLC, and numerous projects in Kenya with local filmmakers. Williams has also directed and produced several Netflix series, most recently being High on the Hog, which has been renewed for a second season. Currently Williams is in post production on his first narrative feature, Cassandro, about the eponymous openly-gay Mexican wrestler, for Amazon Studios.