The fifth annual Vashon Island Film Festival wrapped Sunday after a busy weekend of screenings, filmmaker Q&As and awards, with J.J. Gerber’s The Life We Leave taking home both the top jury prize and the Audience Award for Best Feature.

Attendance was up this year, with solid crowds throughout the weekend. The lineup was strong, with several films that stood out, and the Q&As with filmmakers after the screenings were definitely worth hanging around for. 

The Life We Leave came out of the weekend with two of the biggest prizes, winning both the Chai & Joy Mann Quartermaster Award for Excellence in Feature Filmmaking and the Audience Award for Best Feature. Gerber’s documentary follows Washington entrepreneur Micah Truman and funeral directors Brie Smith and Katey Houston as they build a human composting facility and question some long-held ideas about death and burial. The film also won the Golden Space Needle for Best Documentary at this year’s Seattle International Film Festival.

Another major winner was Hold Onto Me, with Myrisini Aristidou taking both Best Director and Best Screenplay. Lasse Ulvedal Tolbøll also won Best Cinematography. The film follows 11-year-old Iris after she learns that her estranged father has returned to town for his own father’s funeral.

Lisa Gueneau won Best Actor for Silent Rebellion, a period drama set in 1943 Switzerland about a teenager who begins questioning her community’s treatment of French refugees. Melora Walters took Best Supporting Actor for Crooks, a crime story about a pair of scammers whose robbery takes a very bad turn.

Best Editing went to Colin Monie for Everybody to Kenmure Street, a compelling doc about Glasgow residents who come together after learning that authorities plan to deport their neighbors. The film captures the grassroots protest that follows.

Short Winners

Pranav Bhasin’s We Were Here won the Burton Award for Excellence in Short Filmmaking. This charmer follows three retired men in a small Indian town who are less than thrilled about the march of technology, until one of their children takes a job with an AI company.

The Audience Award for Best Short went to Stephen P. Neary’s Living with a Visionary, an animated film that came to Vashon with a Sundance Animation Short Film Jury Award already on its résumé.

Vashon native Cassie Bergman also took home some hardware. Her Sailing the Sound won the audience-selected Mickey’s Chair Award for Best shortCUTZ, the festival’s prize for local short filmmaking.

The festival’s new S. Gordon Tribble “Superstar” Award went to Labrador – Autopsy of Silence. The award recognizes an LGBTQIA+-made or -focused film and comes with a $1,000 cash prize. It honors the memory of Stuart Gordon Tribble, a longtime Vashon resident and member of the film community who died unexpectedly last year.

VIFF heads into its sixth year with attendance on the rise and a strong group of films behind it. Not a bad way to wrap year five.