Mark your calendars
Vashon Island Film Festival 2025

August 7-10, 2025

VIFF 2024 Awards

The Quartermaster Award for Excellence in Feature Filmmaking went to director Guan Hu’s Black Dog, which follows a man named Lang as he returns to his hometown after being released from jail and strikes up an unlikely connection with a stray dog. The film also took home Best Director (Guan Hu), Best Screenplay (Ge Rui and Guan Hu), and Best Cinematography (Gao Weizhe).

The Audience Award for Best Feature went to director Brendan Gabriel Murphy’s Fluxx which finds actress Vada Pierce desperate for answers after she awakens in a bathtub with no memory of prior events and discovers that her home has been ransacked and her husband is missing,

The Burton Award for Excellence in Short Filmmaking went to director Jack Dunphy’s Bob’s Funeral, which also won the Audience Award for Best Short, a multi-media documentary that mixes family videos with various animation styles in search of the root of generational trauma and familial estrangement.

Best Production Design went to Brandon Tonner-Connolly (I Saw the TV Glow), which is a once-in-a-generation horror film that follows suburban teenager Owen, whose classmate Maddy introduces him to a mysterious late-night TV show that is a vision of the supernatural world beneath their own.

Best Editing went to Kathryn Robson & Chris Gibson and Best Original Music went to Chris Ruggiero, both for Resynator, which chronicles director Alison Tavel’s journey through the unsettling secrets and complex truths of her late father, inventor Don Tavel, who built a synthesizer prototype before his death when she was only ten months old.

Best Actor went to Everett Blunck for Griffin in Summer, the fourteen-year-old title character who spends summer vacation putting on a dramatic new play until his attention drifts to kindred spirit Brad, a zoned-out handyman and failed performance artist.

Best Supporting Actor went to Eryk Lubos for Swarm (Rój), the patriarch of a family self-exiled on a remote island until his wife expresses a desire to return to the world from which they are hiding.

Best shortCUTZ (sponsored by C’Mon Barber) went to Boo by Jake Conroy, chronicling the adventures of a young girl after moving to a remote island.

A big thank you to our 2024 sponsors Caffe Vino Olio; Chubby Cat Cannabis; C’Mon Barber; and O Sole Mio.