This year’s Greg Harris Film Festival took place on Monday, May 5 at the Wilmette Theater. The event was an exciting opportunity as New Trier student’s self-produced films were showcased and many received awards.  

Junior Anaya Brainch, who was nominated for Best Cinematography, Best Performance, Best Film and Best Editing for her film “If Looks Could Kill’, won the awards for Best Film and Best Editing. Branch was assigned to submit a film for the festival for her TV and Film 2 class.  Brainch directed the film alongside Milan Armstrong (cameraman), Marinelle Diamond (writer), and Maggie Phaco (writer).  The team was required to include seemingly random elements in their submission, such as a character that was an exchange student, someone eating a sandwich, and someone wearing a weird hat.

Although this is only Brainch’s second year participating in the event – last year, she received the “Rookie of the Fest” award, which acknowledges first-time Greg Harris entrees for their work. She also walked away with Best Music Video for “String Theory”, and an Audience Choice Award for “Driven to Madness”. Brainch saysshe’s had a passion for film since childhood.

“I don’t know what exactly started this interest,” she said, “But it has been one for me from a very young age, I would make video slideshows, edits, edit together home videos, or make my little brother star in my next movie.”

As director, Brainch came up with the initial idea for this year’s film, read over the script, organized the shots, and worked with the actors and the crew.  

“I think most people overlook sound editing, too,” Brainch said.  “It’s not just lining up the shots next to each other. The film really comes together in the editing, and you get to decide which version of the story you want to tell.” 

While many entries came from students like Brainch who were enrolled in film production classes, New Trier encourages all interested students to submit their films. 

“This year we put a lot of effort into advertising the film fest outside of the film production classes, which is where most of our entries traditionally come from” says Carlo Trovato, a longtime sponsor of the event.

The judges of the festival evaluate the entries using a number of criteria, such as storytelling, coherence, filmmaking skills, and any potential technical issues that could get in the way of enjoying the film. The award categories are tailored each year; this year there was a high number of animated submissions, so the judges included a Best Animation award–an award that hadn’t been there in years prior.

This year, the film festival also tried something completely new: the Microfilm Challenge. This challenge entailed making a movie, 30 seconds long at most, that incorporated the following elements: a pillowcase, opening an umbrella, and the line, “Fine. I’ll do it myself.”  

“Submitting the films is the easy part,” says Trovato. “It’s all the work that goes into actually making the films that’s the hard part.  Students spend a lot of time working on scripting their projects before filming them. The editing process also takes a lot of time to get the cuts and transitions right, and [also] making sure the sound comes through.”

The awards given out to New Trier students at this year’s festival are as follows:

Best Animation: “Popcorn Dreams”- Elaine Cui

Best Cinematography: “The Safe Room”- Dylan Wiseman

Best Comed: “Objective: Midnight Snack” – Addison Yun

Best Documentary: “Inspired Native” – Abbie Ha

Best Editing: “If Looks Could Kill” – Anaya Brainch

Best Microfilm: “Sweet Revenge” – Film Club

Best Performance: “The Last Goodbye” – Jamie Williams

Audience Choice Award: TIE “February 3rd” – Jack Rosenthal & Luka Macika, “The Saferoom” – Dylan Wiseman

Best Film: “If Looks Could Kill” – Anaya Brainch

The Greg Harris Film Festival first began in 2009 after the death of Greg Harris, a beloved colleague of Trovato and former New Trier English teachers Chris Oetter and Kimberly Berg.  They started the event to honor his love of film.

During Covid, the films began to be shown in advisories since the screening could not be done at in-person at the theater.  Since then, there’s been an advisory screening every year to expand the audience for the films. 

Trovato and his co-sponsor, Eric Johnson, were in charge of most of the planning for the festival  While this is Johnson’s first year as co-sponsor, Trovato has been behind the scenes putting the final video of all the movies together for about a decade. This was also his first year actually attending the event, which he said he was very excited for.

“If you have any interest in film at all, I would encourage you to enter a film and consider taking it as a class,” says Brainch, “New Trier has access to all sorts of equipment, reserved for film students, that really make any vision possible. The media department at New Trier has had a huge impact on my high school experience, and I couldn’t be more grateful.”

If you would like to submit films to the Greg Harris Film Festival in the future, click here to find out more.