The winners of the award for Best T&T Film in Development at the 2017 T&T Film Festival (ttff), writers Karen Martinez and Georgia Popplewell and producer Lesley-Ann Macfarlane, say the prize is a sign of progress. It showed that bpTT and ttff are acknowledging that the process of making a film can be a long and arduous one.

The project, a feature-length narrative script called Scattered, has already won several prizes, including the Best Caribbean Film Mart Project award at ttff 2016, and has been shortlisted for the Sundance International Screenwriters’ Lab and CineMart Rotterdam.

Cast members, production staff and well wishers gathered at the Central Bank Auditorium to celebrate the very best of the Trinidad & Tobago Film Festival 2017, at its awards ceremony on Tuesday evening. After a hectic week of film screenings, talks and panel discussions, folks involved in the film industry got a chance to talk about, cheer on and congratulate the winner and runners-up.

Columbus Communications (Flow) was the festival’s presenting sponsor and its director of marketing Cindy Ann Gatt, said in her short address that the company being proud to see that cinemas were fully booked during the various screenings in Trinidad and in Tobago for the first time.

Filmmaker Michael Mooleedhar proudly walked away with two awards for his Green Days by the River, winning in the Best T&T Feature Film and People’s Choice Best Narrative Feature Film categories.