The Space Between, starring 2009 Oscar nominee Melissa Leo, won the $50,000 Grand Prize as Best Dramatic Feature at the Heartland Film Festival in Indianapolis on Saturday.
Leo, who was nominated for an Academy Award last year for Frozen River, was not present at the ceremony, but filmmakers Travis and Kristine Fine were there to pick up the award for The Space Between, which does not yet have a distributor. Other big Heartland winners were Freedom Riders ($25,000 for Best Documentary) and The Butterfly Circus ($10,000 for Best Short Film). Freedom Riders will air on PBS’s American Experience next May, and you can view The Butterfly Circus in its entirety here.
A total of $150,000 was awarded at this year’s festival, bringing Heartland’s total over the years to more than $2.3 million in prizes.
Meanwhile, Andrew Kosove and Broderick Johnson, co-founders of Alcon Entertainment and producers of The Blind Side, My Dog Skip, and The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants, won the annual Pioneering Spirit Award “for their creative spirit in filmmaking and their contribution to Heartland’s mission to support filmmakers in their quest to create films that bring out the best of the human spirit,” according to a press release.
See a complete list of award winners here.
