PB Film Festival Winners Announced

Charlotte Rampling in "Juniper"

(PRESS RELEASE)_(West Palm Beach, FL – February 17, 2023) “Experience the Magic of Cinema” was the slogan of a major new cultural event: The Donald M. Ephraim Palm Beach Film Festival© Presented by MorseLife, which completed its 21-day and 37-film series last night, 
 
At the closing night screening of PEACE BY CHOCOLATE at the CMX Downtown in Palm Beach Gardens, Founding Festival Director Ellen Wedner announced the Award Winners based on votes submitted by audience members throughout the Festival.
 
Best Feature Film
JUNIPER
Director: Matthew J Saville
Upon returning home from boarding school and still dealing with the untimely death of his mother, self-destructive teenager Sam discovers that his gin-soaked, wheelchair-bound, English grandmother, Ruth (Charlotte Rampling), has moved in. Their first meeting is awkward, yet the person he gets to know is far from what he expected. With both strong-willed characters, a battle of supremacy ensues, enabling Sam to embrace life again and for Ruth to face her mortality. (New Zealand, 2021)

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​2nd Place: THE BLUE CAFTAN
 
Best Documentary Film
DARYL JONES: IN THE BLOOD
Director: Eric Hamburg
Rolling Stones bassist Darryl Jones reflects on growing up on the South Side of Chicago, playing alongside Miles Davis, Madonna, and Sting, and replacing Bill Wyman in the World's Greatest Rock and Roll Band. (USA, 2022)
Note: Darryl Jones attended the film’s first screening at the Festival.
2nd Place: NO STRAIGHT LINES: THE RISE OF QUEER COMICS
 
Best Short Film
GHOSTED
Co-Directors: Sam Millman & Peter Vass
A widower is encouraged by his best friend to download some dating apps and “get back out there.” The only glitch is that his first match is with his deceased wife.
2nd Place: HYSTERICAL
 
‘The inaugural Donald M. Ephraim Palm Beach Film Festival© Presented by MorseLife was a big success, attracting thousands of local film fans to nearly 100 different screenings at eight different cinemas throughout the county,” says Wedner, who paid special praise “to Festival producers Don Ephraim and Terri Sriberg, MorseLife CEO Keith A. Myers and his entire team, the dedicated members of our screening committee, media supporters such as Legends Radio and Palm Beach Society, and to movie lovers everywhere who are helping to keep this powerful yet delicate artform so vibrantly alive and relevant.”
 
As the great filmmaker Martin Scorsese once said, “Now more than ever we need to talk to each other, to listen to each other and understand how we see the world, and cinema is the best medium for doing this.”