Montclair Film Festival: Danny Boyle's Beatles-Inspired 'Yesterday' Among Audience Award Winners

Other prize recipients at the eighth annual New Jersey event included 'Mickey and the Bear,' 'Mossville: When Great Trees Fall' and 'Premature,' each of which won multiple honors.

The Montclair Film Festival concluded its 8th annual edition over the weekend, presenting awards to Danny Boyle's Beatles-inspired Yesterday as well as to multiple prize winners Mickey and the Bear, Mossville: When Great Trees Fall and Premature.

Yesterday, which was a surprise screening on May 5, won the audience award for world cinema, which honors films produced outside of the U.S. The prize comes amid multiple festival screenings for the title about a struggling singer-songwriter who wakes up to a world that has forgotten The Beatles, becoming a superstar as he reintroduces audiences to their hit songs. The Richard Curtis- and Jack Barth-written movie stars Himesh Patel, Lily James and Kate McKinnon and had its world premiere at the Tribeca Film Festival ahead of its June 28 theatrical release.

Mickey and the Bear, directed by Annabelle Attanasio, won the inaugural Mark Urman Award for fiction filmmaking, honoring emerging low-budget American independent filmmaking, in the festival's Future/Now section. The film also won the Audible Storyteller Award, selected from a curated list of films with an opportunity to discuss development of an original audio work with the Amazon-owned platform.

Another Future/Now entry, Premature, saw co-writer and actress Zora Howard win a special jury prize. That film, co-written and directed by Rashaad Ernesto Green, also won the audience award for best fiction feature.

Additional audience award winners included Other Music (documentary feature) and Mack Wrestles (short film).

The documentary Mossville: When Great Trees Fall, directed by Alexander Glustrom, won the fifth annual David Carr Award for truth in non-fiction filmmaking, which honors a filmmaker who uses journalistic techniques to explore contemporary subjects and is presented in honor of the late New York Times journalist's commitment to reporting on the media. The prize was presented by Carr's daughter, Erin Lee Carr. Mossville also won the top honor from the Junior Jury, made up of 15 area high-school students.

The fiction feature prize went to Monos, while Helene Louvart took home a special jury prize for cinematography for A Family Submerged.

Honeyland, directed by Ljubomir Stefanov and Tamara Kotevska, won the Bruce Sinofsky Award in the documentary feature category. A special jury prize for cinematography in the same category was awarded to Luke Lorentzen for his work on Midnight Family.

The New Jersey films award, honoring a group of films made by New Jersey artists, went to Life With Layla.

The junior jury's special cinematography prize went to Patrick Bresnan for Pahokee.

This story has been corrected to note that Rashaad Ernesto Green co-wrote Premature with Zora Howard.