The 29th Hawaii International Film Festival (HIFF) has awarded its Halekulani Golden Orchid for Narrative Feature to Yao Shuhua’s Empire Of Silver and its Golden Orchid for Documentary Feature to Zhao Liang’s Petition.

The winners were chosen for best expressing artistic and technical excellence and for promoting cross-cultural understanding.

The NETPAC Award went to Lee Hey-jun’s Castaway On The Moon and the Puma Emerging Filmmaker Award to Tze Chun’s Children Of Invention.

Jurors for the narrative competition were filmmaker Toa Fraser, Peter Britos, who is chairman of the Department of Communications and Multimedia Program, Hawaii Pacific University, and actor Daniel Dae Kim (Lost).

Jurors for the documentary competition were producer Karin Chien, editor of Giant Robot Magazine Martin Wong, and Leanne Ferrer, programs manager, Pacific Islanders in Communications.

HIFF opened Oct 15 with Bong Joon-ho’s thriller Mother and screened 170 films with 14 world premieres, eight international premieres, 14 North American premieres and 26 US premieres, with new spotlights on the Philippines and Okinawan cinema.

The fest closes Oct 25 but has an early awards ceremony. Its closing night will be on Oct 24 with The Warrior And The Wolf, starring Maggie Q, as closing film. Maggie Q will also be awarded HIFF’s Maverick Award, given in honour of a cinema artist who “defies the rules, forging a unique film career, and transcending labels and thresholds to vacillate between Hollywoodand global cinema.”

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