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Written by Sarah Boslaugh Monday, 26 March 2012 00:00

The 2012 Atlanta Film Festival has come and gone—10 days, over 125 films including over 50 with Georgia connections, and tons of celebrity appearances and photo-ops—and its time to announce the Grand Jury prize winners.

The Narrative Feature winner is Keith Miller’s Welcome to Pine Hill, a drama that blends fact and fiction and stars Shannon Harper as a reformed Caribbean-American drug dealer who seeks redemption and transformation on an odyssey from Brooklyn through the Catskills.

Cloudburst, starring Olympia Dukakis and Brenda Fricker, picked up the Pink Peach Feature award for the best GLBT film. The story, based on a play by Thom Fitzgerald, is about a lesbian couple who escapes from a nursing home and head to Canada to get married. Cloudburst will open the St. Louis QFest, so you can catch it at the Tivoli on April 22.

Code 2600, directed by Jeremy Zerechak, won the Documentary Feature prize. Code 2600 explores the information technology age and the implications our new connectedness has on our ability to maintain our personal privacy and security.

The Atlanta Film Festival is noted for its shorts program, and presentation at the festival qualifies narrative and animated shorts for the Academy Awards. The winning Narrative Short was Zoltan: The Hungarian Gangster of Love, directed by Justin Reardon. I Am, directed by Harriet Hirshorn and Katherine Linton, was the winning Pink Peach Short, Thank You, directed by Pendleton Ward the winning Animated Short, and Ik Ben Echt Niet Bang! (I’m Never Afraid!) by Willem Baptist the winning Documentary Short. Boxcar Fair performed by Little Tybee won the Music Video prize for directors Brock Scott and Tom Haney. | Sarah Boslaugh