The El Paso Movie Pageant’s winners included two standout movies about hardworking People: Director Pete Muller’s documentary Bucks Harbor, about hardscrabble life in coastal Maine, and Jared Sprouse’s Occasion USA, a twisty story of violence at a patriotic get together retailer. Occasion USA additionally gained the Grand Jury Prize.
The competition celebrated filmmakers from the borderlands and past. One spotlight was a exhibiting of native movies on the historic Plaza Theatre, through which the whole, huge stage was taken up by El Paso filmmakers.
One other spotlight was Sandra Adair, Richard Linklater’s longtime collaborator, recounting her astonishing work on Boyhood. She obtained the competition’s Lifetime Achievement Award.
Pageant founder and inventive director Carlos F. Corral and govt director Andrea Calleros led an lively, impressed, skillfully curated lineup of movies that emphasised tales of borders of every kind — bodily, cultural, emotional.
The El Paso Movie & Inventive Industries Fee at Go to El Paso coordinated a sequence of insightful morning panels to coincide with the competition, guided by inventive industries supervisor April Sanchez, whose kindness and a spotlight to element made attendees really feel at house.
El Paso has a tight-knit movie neighborhood the place folks pitch in to assist one another make nice work, which has earned it repeated placement on our checklist of the Finest Locations to Reside and Work as a Moviemaker.
The friendships amongst native filmmakers is clear in competition Q&As, the place the identical names got here up repeatedly: Apart from operating the competition and making his personal movies, Corral is a hands-on sound skilled who typically helps filmmakers good their sound. Charles Horak leads Rio Bravo Outpost, which makes a speciality of movie manufacturing and put up. Tower Productions is a prolific native manufacturing home that simply celebrated its tenth anniversary; and president Carlos De La Torre presided over a number of informative talks.
El Paso filmmaker Valeria Contreras, whose beautiful brief “Oranges” recalled a extra harmless period alongside the border, is each an envoy and embodiment of the inventive, collaborative and rising native scene.
Filmmaker Fortunate McKee, in the meantime, is the glue for a lot of endeavors, and launched among the key gamers in Joel Veach’s American Muscle, a spellbinding desert noir that performed Saturday evening. Veach earned the competition’s Director Award.
And the competition welcomed again Drew Mayer-Oakes, the previous El Paso movie commissioner whose accomplishments included serving to carry Finest Image winner One Battle After One other to El Paso. He’s now the movie commissioner of Corpus Christi.
The total checklist of winners is beneath.
El Paso Movie Pageant Winners 2026
LIFETIME ACHIEVEMENT AWARD
Sandra Adair, ACE
GRAND JURY PRIZE
Jared Sprouse, Occasion USA
SPECIAL JURY PRIZE
Efraín Mojica, Rebecca Zweig, Jaripeo
DIRECTOR AWARD
Joel Veach, American Muscle
PRODUCER AWARD
Maxime Bernard, The Mechanics of Borders
BEST FEATURE FILM (Documentary)
Pete Muller, Bucks Harbor
BEST FEATURE FILM (Narrative)
Jared Sprouse, Occasion USA
BEST SHORT FILM (Narrative)
Nicky Rudolph Calloway, “I Am A Gentleman”
BEST SHORT FILM (Documentary)
Nathan Truesdell, “A Derailment”
BEST SHORT FILM (Animated)
Tshay Meade, “Inform Me When You Get Residence”
ANIMATION ARDOR
Offered To
Camillo Sancisi, “Everblind”
El PASO FILMMAKER AWARD
David Velez, Brandon Rivera: “EP Challenge”
Fundamental picture: El Paso filmmakers fill the stage at El Paso’s historic Plaza Theatre. MovieMaker.
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