Duran Torrent Wins Focus Forward Filmmaker Competition

Rafel Duran Torrent has the focus of a winner…

The Spanish filmmaker has been awarded the Grand Jury Prize in the Focus Forward Filmmaker Competition for his short film Cyborg Foundation. The $100,000 cash prize was presented to him at an awards ceremony held Tuesday at the Sundance Film Festival.

Focus Forward

As part of Focus Forward’s collaboration with the Sundance Institute, Duran Torrent will be invited to a Shorts Lab at the Sundance Institute during 2013.

Focus Forward – Short Films, Big Ideas is a series of 30 three-minute nonfiction films, inspired by GE’s vision of innovative people serving as the catalyst for world change. Produced by leading documentary filmmakers, the films explore the power of ideas and invention and, after appearing at film festivals, are distributed across cable and satellite VOD, gaming system networks, and Internet Free On Demand services as well as in theaters and on DVD.

The short documentary film competition attracted more than 600 submissions from 69 countries.

The jury included Sundance Film Festival senior programmer Caroline Libresco, actress Daryl Hannah and filmmakers Barbara Kopple, José Padilha, Joe Berlinger, Floyd Webb and Peter Wintonick.

The winning films are live and available to view for free on the Focus Forward website, along with the 15 other competition finalists, at http://focusforwardfilms.com/finalists.

The cash prize winners of the Filmmaker Competition are as follows:

Grand Jury Prize, $100,000: Rafel Duran Torrent (Cyborg Foundation), Spain

Winner, 2nd Place, $50,000: Jared P. Scott & Kelly Nyks (The Artificial Leaf), USA

Winner, 3rd Place, $30,000: Paul Lazarus (Slingshot), USA

Winner, 4th Place, $10,000: Kim Munsamy (Bones Don’t Lie and Don’t Forget), Guatemala

Winner, 5th Place, $10,000: Callum Cooper (Mine Kafon), UK