The Philip K. Dick Science Fiction Film Festival has announced the award winners for its tenth anniversary season. The event was held from December 15-18 at venues in Manhattan and Queens. 

BEST PHILIP K. DICK FEATURE

Capsules (2022)

• Director: Luke Momo
• Run Time/Country: 70 min, USA
• Synopsis: After experimenting with mysterious substances, four chem students find themselves addicted in the worst way possible: they’ll die unless they take more.

BEST SUPERNATURAL FEATURE

Impuratus (2022)

• Director: Michael Yurinko
• Run Time/Country: 134 min, USA
• Synopsis: Circa 1930: A police detective is summoned to a remote mental hospital to witness a death-bed confession from a mysterious Civil War soldier that will have him question the validity of the supernatural.

BEST DOCUMENTARY

A Tear in the Sky (2021)

• Director: Caroline Cory
• Run Time/Country: 90 min, USA
• Synopsis: An unprecedented journey into the UFO / UAP phenomenon. A team of military personnel, scientists and special guest William Shatner will attempt to re-capture, in real time, the US Navy “TicTac” UFOs, using state-of-the-art, military-grade equipment and technology. What they find instead are thought-provoking clues into the true nature of the UFO phenomenon and the very fabric of our spacetime reality.

BEST SCI-FI HORROR

Site 13 (2021)

• Director: Nathan Faudree
• Run Time/Country: 87 min, USA
• Synopsis: When Dr. Nathan Marsh awakens from a catatonic state in a mental institution, he must relive his last expedition by watching tapes from the site visit, only to discover he’s unleashed an unstoppable horror.

BEST SCI-FI SHORT

Faith (2022)

• Director: Carol Butron
• Run Time/Country: 19 min, Spain
• Synopsis: When just a small child, Teresa has to face the disappearance of her best friend, Lucas. After many years and without having forgotten him, Teresa begins to have a hunch that Lucas is alive, but in another dimension.

BEST PHILIP K. DICK SHORT

Red Gaia (2022)

• Director: Udesh Chetty
• Run Time/Country: 13 min, South Africa
• Synopsis: Alone on the dying red planet, among the ruins of human civilization, one last android desperately guards the last essences of life. In her pursuit for meaning, she finds her own soul hanging in the balance. Red Gaia is a tone-poem meditation on life, death and rebirth, destruction and creation and the cycles of existence, drawing inspiration from the Bhagavad Gita, Dante’s Purgatorio, the Kabballah, the Tibetan Bardol Thodol.

BEST SINGULARITY SCI-FI SHORT

Motherload (2022)

• Director: Sebastien Landry
• Run Time/Country: 9 min, Canada
• Synopsis: An alien, borrowing the body of a human mother-to-be, is confronted by fear and uncertainty as its offspring grows inside her.

BEST SUPERNATURAL SHORT

Blue Fire (2021)

• Director: Nick Ronan
• Run Time/Country: 20 min, USA
• Synopsis: Deep in the snowy Blue Mountains, two damaged lives come crashing back together when they discover something in the forest not of this world.

BEST ISOLATION IN SCI-FI SHORT

Night (2022)

• Director: Frank Sun
• Run Time/Country: 20 min, USA
• Synopsis: A man arrives to a friend’s apartment and hears sounds from outside his window…but is it real? 

BEST CULTURE IN SCI-FI SHORT

Mirror Man (2021)

• Director: Ginew Benton
• Run Time/Country: 5 min, USA
• Synopsis: A Native police officer, who is doubting her traditional faith, is called to a possible burglary but is met by a supernatural entity that leads her to a buried secret.

BEST ANIMATION

Afro-Algorithms (2022)

• Director: Anatola Araba
• Run Time/Country: 15 min, USA
• Synopsis: In a distant future, an artificial intelligence named Aero is inaugurated as the world’s first AI leader. However, she soon finds that important world views are missing from her databank, including the stories of the historically marginalized and oppressed.

BEST WEB SERIES

Neoshin Episode 01: Cold Blood (2022)

• Director: Sebastian Selg, Ramon Schauer
• Run Time/Country: 5 min, Germany
• Synopsis: After the invention of CRYONIC REALITY (CR) by EDEN Association, world leaders chose to discontinue the counting of time in 2073 and proclaimed the final year 2073X. CR is a virtual world of utopia that people can access to escape the bleak reality. When influencer AYUKO heads to a concert of her favourite band NEOSHIN in CR, she has no idea that a virtual virus will change her life forever.

BEST TRAILER

Chaska (2022 Trailer)

• Director: Liz Guarracino
• Run Time/Country: 2 min, USA01
• Synopsis: How would you feel if you found out the U.S. Government created ancestry .com to catch a single being?

BEST VIRTUAL REALITY

Fortune Teller (2022)

• Director: Brian Abraham
• Run Time/Country: 5 min, USA
• Synopsis: A fortune teller who’s down on her luck mistakenly summons the ghost of her ex-husband, revealing secrets that spell her doom. VR180 narrative horror/thriller short film. 

BEST SCI-FI SCREENPLAY

Black Cross

Writer: Korea Black, Gianna Rose

BEST SCI-FI PROTOTYPING SCREENPLAY

Emergent

Writer: Alan Mah Baxter

BEST SCI-FI GRAPHIC NOVEL

Moriarty

Writer/Artist: Daniel Corey

BEST SCI-FI SUPERNATURAL SCREENPLAY

Sacred Sun

Writer: Michael Louis Gould

BEST SCI-FI SHORT FORMAT SCREENPLAY

Sven

Writer: Jesse Dorian

HONORABLE MENTION:

Bunker: The Last Fleet

Writer: Rowan Pullen, Stephen Potter

About The Philip K. Dick Science Fiction Film Festival:

“The core of my writing is not art but truth.” – Philip K. Dick

The Philip K. Dick Science Fiction Film Festival, which launched in 2012 as New York City’s first and only festival of its kind, celebrates its 10th anniversary season. The festival honors the enduring legacy of novelist Philip K. Dick, whose enormously effective works composed of fictional universes, virtual realities, technological uprising, dystopian worlds and human mutation served as a significant observation of the current state of society. Organized by individuals and filmmakers who understand the difficulties and challenges of presenting unique narratives in a corporate environment, the festival embraces original concepts and alternative approaches to storytelling in the form of independent science fiction, horror, supernatural, fantasy and metaphysical films. Since 2013, the festival has held additional gatherings in France, Germany, Poland, Rotterdam, and Los Angeles. The event was included as one of the 25 Coolest Film Festivals in the World by MovieMaker Magazine in 2022.

[Based on a press release.]