Di­rec­tor, ed­i­tor and first-time film com­pe­ti­tion con­tender, Shane Ho­sein, tri­umphed over 40 oth­ers with his short film Sol­u­ble to win $10,000 cash in Green Screen’s Very Short Shorts Mo­bile Film Com­pe­ti­tion.

Al­so cop­ping a vic­to­ry was Re­nal­do “Red” Fred­er­ick’s I Refuse which took home the $5,000 Ju­ry Award: Youth Win­ner in the 17-25 years cat­e­go­ry.

The an­nounce­ment was on Wednes­day at the open­ing night gala of the 8th an­nu­al En­vi­ron­men­tal Film Fes­ti­val— Green Screen, held at Dig­i­cel IMAX last night, which fol­lowed the screen­ing of the 20 (one-minute) films in com­pe­ti­tion.

The com­pe­ti­tion is the newest fea­ture in the En­vi­ron­men­tal Film Fes­ti­val’s line­up.

Over 40 en­tries were sub­mit­ted, and a pan­el of in­dus­try ex­perts and film­mak­ers nar­rowed the list to 20 fi­nal­ists whose films best con­veyed the theme Sto­ries of our Rivers and Seas, ac­cord­ing to a state­ment from the Green Screen or­gan­is­ers.

The fi­nal ju­ry pan­el in­clud­ed tal­ent­ed film­mak­er Danielle Di­ef­fen­thaler, writer and film pro­gram­mer Jonathan Ali, Mar­tini­quan film pro­gram­mer Steve Ze­bi­na and wa­ter and san­i­ta­tion spe­cial­ist at the In­ter-Amer­i­can De­vel­op­ment Bank (IDB) Gilroy Lewis. In his com­pe­ti­tion de­but, Ho­sein said his film was made to raise aware­ness of sol­u­ble pol­lu­tants from peo­ple’s day-to-day ac­tiv­i­ties en­ter­ing the nat­ur­al ecosys­tems.

Fred­er­ick’s film fea­tured a dystopi­an take on a so­ci­ety with­out clean wa­ter that barters plas­tic in ex­change for wa­ter.

While pre­sent­ing Ho­sein with his prize, Trinidad and To­ba­go Sol­id Waste Man­age­ment Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed (SWM­COL) CEO Ronald Roach, praised the com­pe­ti­tion say­ing, “This pro­vides an op­por­tu­ni­ty to spread key en­vi­ron­men­tal mes­sages through the medi­um of film.

In­creas­ing prob­lems of over-con­sump­tion of re­sources, en­vi­ron­men­tal degra­da­tion and species loss are af­fect­ing our cli­mate in un­prece­dent­ed ways, lead­ing to in­creas­es in nat­ur­al dis­as­ters, as ev­i­denced by the dis­as­trous flood­ing that was ex­pe­ri­enced in Trinidad two weeks ago.”

SWM­COL, FilmTT, At­lantic, the Cana­di­an High Com­mis­sion and Cul­turego Mag­a­zine spon­sored the film fes­ti­val and will con­tin­ue through Sat­ur­day, with school screen­ings at Dig­i­cel IMAX to­day from 10 am.

The 20 one-minute fi­nal­ist films will be screened along with the an­i­mat­ed fea­ture The Ad­ven­tures of Za­ck & Mol­ly. Stu­dents will learn al­so about pos­si­ble ca­reers in ma­rine and coastal zone man­age­ment from ex­perts in the field through the de­but of the fes­ti­val’s Green Ca­reer Talks ini­tia­tive.