Tropfest Winners 2016

By Niall Roeder.

What a turn around! After tragically being cancelled in November, Tropfest rose from the cinematic ashes and triumphed on Valentine’s Day just past. By all accounts it once again lived up to its claim of being the World’s Largest Short Film Festival and delivered an epic night to the estimated 100,000 strong loved-up and looking-for-love attendees.

Prior to the Feb 14, many were claiming it to be the best V-Day option going around, and word on the street is, it lived up to the hype. Sunday night was picturesque. With an exciting combination of couple mush and single desperation in the air, Sydney came through with the goods and turned on a cracking summer’s day, water colour sunset and balmy evening.

In regards to Tropfest, the question on everyone’s lips is, “who got lucky?”. There were actually two fellas that went home with the goods, LA duo Spencer Susser and Daniel Cloud-Campos. Shiny, their stop-frame animation made with real clothing wowed the pants off judges Mel Gibson, Rebecca Gibney and Simon Baker to beat the other 15 entrants to take the top gong.

Shiny is the story of a damsel in distress, her priceless diamond (aka shiny) and her valiant saviour. I could give you a detailed synopsis, intricately outlining the clothing-characters, plot and filming techniques… but with a running time of 3:44, you can just watch it yourself and do your own analysis.

All entries were killer this year. It’s crazy to think that the whole thing was a whisker away from not happening. Besides the deserved winner, Yianna Rowlands took out Trop Jr with the thought provoking and very socially relevant Chess People… And there were heaps of other impressive entries too.

Also, the Tropfest People’s Choice Award has yet to be decided and it’s not too late to vote. So if you love Tropfest, want to win a new HP Spectre x2 tablet or both – get voting.