CLEVELAND — Several of the top prizes at this year’s Indie Gathering International Film Festival in Cleveland went to hometown filmmakers.
Rafeeq Roberts took home several awards, including Best Ohio Filmmaker for his film, “False Gods,” which is about a shy poet learning how to respond to racial injustice.
“It was really a shock to win,” Roberts said. “It feels great. It feels like vindication for all the hard work we did.”
The overall Audience Choice Winner went to a duo from Cleveland: Nick Muhlbach and Lou Dinardo. They were the creative force behind “A Shattered Diamond,” about a group of young friends dealing with the loss of their own.
“With the pandemic, when this film was finished, we weren’t able to have a bigger premiere,” said Muhlbach. “So we are really grateful to the Indie Gathering for giving us the opportunity to not just show it to friends and family but to the larger film community here at the festival.”
For Dinardo, who wrote and starred in the film, winning the award was a welcome surprise.
“It’s amazing,” he said. “It’s great to be able to share this and inspire our colleagues.”
Along with a large contingent of filmmakers from across Ohio, this year’s Indie Gathering attracted festival goers from 14 states and Puerto Rico. Continued COVID restrictions and an increase in airfare prevented more foreign filmmakers from coming to Ohio this year, said festival founder Ray Szuch. In years past, Szuch said filmmakers from about a dozen countries have attended.
A young composer from Japan took this year’s top prize in the film score competition.
Munenori Kishi is a recent graduate of the Berklee School of Music in Boston. He traveled to Ohio to pick up his award — a champion’s belt like boxers win after a title fight.
“I studied Jazz and hope to transition into scoring films,” Kishi said. “This honor here at the Indie Gathering is a great step in that direction. I’ve been able to network with a lot of filmmakers,” he said.
Will Browne, the third place winner in the score competition, also traveled to the festival for the chance to network. The New Yorker, who spent a career in the finance industry, is new to composing music for movies.
“There’s people here from all levels of the industry,” Browne said. “People working at really top level to people starting out like me, so it’s been a very supportive community.”
Supporting independent filmmakers has been the goal since the very beginning of the Indie Gathering 27 years ago, when former martial arts coach and filmmaker Ray Szuch founded the festival.
“We’re not just a festival, we’re a family,” Szuch said. He knows what it’s like to be an independent and he shares the passion of the filmmakers he meets each August.
“In independent films, which are very lower budget and often very inexpensive, there’s a love of making a movie, of creating it,” Szuch said.
The director, who is stepping down as director at the end of the year, will still be back in 2023 to support the filmmakers.
“Year after year, people return and when I see them, I greet them and I ask them, ‘what connections do you want to make this year? And I bring people together: film scorers, directors, producers, writers, bring them together,” Szuch said.
That kind of personal attention is the main reason why actress Alicia McClendon traveled from Indianapolis to attend the festival.
“Here has been good to network and meet other filmmakers and actors,” McClendon said. “It’s been really great.”
