Eighth Grade wins Golden Space Needle Audience Awards for Best Film
Grand Jury Prizes go to The Reports on Sarah and Saleem, Dead Pigs, Rust,Inventing Tomorrow, and Thunder Road
Best Documentary goes to Won’t You Be My Neighbor?
Elsie Fisher of Eighth Grade wins Best Actress
Miguel Ángel Solá of The Last Suit wins Best Actor

Artistic Director Beth Barrett said, “Executive Director Sarah Wilke and I were thrilled to present Ethan Hawke with the Festival’s Outstanding Achievement Award in Cinema before a screening of Blaze, his latest directing effort, as well as welcoming Melanie Lynskey back to the Festival for a special screening of Seattle based local film, Sadie. We also had an incredible lineup of local films, and our documentary film selection continues to be among the best in the country. Back for the second year was SIFF’s New Works-in-Progress Forum, where we screened two narrative and two documentary features in the midst of their creative process to the Seattle audience of industry and festival attendees, as well as continuing our exploration of the intersections between cinema and Virtual Reality at our first Pop-up event, SIFF VR Zone at Pacific Place.”

The Best of SIFF lineup will be announced later today and SIFF’s five cinema screens will resume daily cinema service with Best of SIFF titles and other outstanding cinematic experiences beginning Friday, June 15.

SIFF celebrates its films and filmmakers with the Golden Space Needle Audience Awards. Selected by Festival audiences, awards are given in six categories: Best Film, Best Documentary, Best Director, Best Actor, Best Actress, and Best Short Film. This year, over 80,000 ballots were submitted.

The 2018 Golden Space Needle Awards are created by Seattle Artist, Piper O’Neill. More about O’Neill atpiperoneill.net.

GOLDEN SPACE NEEDLE AWARD – BEST FILM
Eighth Grade, directed by Bo Burnham (USA 2018)
First runner-up: The Last Suit, directed by Pablo Solarz (Argentina/Poland/Spain/France/Germany 2017)
Second runner-up: Champions, directed by Javier Fesser (Spain 2018)
Third runner-up: C’est la vie!, directed by Olivier Nakache, Eric Toledano (France/Canada/Belgium 2017)
Fourth runner-up: Supa Modo, directed by Likarion Wainaina (Kenya/Germany 2018)

GOLDEN SPACE NEEDLE AWARD – BEST DOCUMENTARY
Won’t You Be My Neighbor?, directed by Morgan Neville (USA 2018)
First runner-up: Pick of the Litter, directed by Don Hardy Jr., Dana Nachman (USA 2017)
Second runner-up: Return to Mount Kennedy, directed by Eric Becker (USA 2018)
Third runner-up: The Most Dangerous Year, directed by Vlada Knowlton (USA 2018)
Fourth runner-up: The Russian Five, directed by Joshua Riehl (USA 2018)

GOLDEN SPACE NEEDLE AWARD – BEST DIRECTOR
Gustav Möller, The Guilty (Denmark 2018)
First runner-up: Pablo Solarz, The Last Suit (Argentina/Poland/Spain/France/Germany 2017)
Second runner-up: Megan Griffiths, Sadie (USA 2018)
Third runner-up: Debra Granik, Leave No Trace (USA 2018)
Fourth runner-up: Albert Dupontel, See You Up There (France 2017)

GOLDEN SPACE NEEDLE AWARD – BEST ACTOR
Miguel Ángel Solá, The Last Suit (Argentina/Poland/Spain/France/Germany 2017)
First runner-up: Jakob Cedergren, The Guilty (Denmark 2018)
Second runner-up: Ethan Hawke, First Reformed (USA 2017)
Third runner-up: Jim Cummings, Thunder Road (USA 2018)
Fourth runner-up: Ben Foster, Leave No Trace (USA 2018)

GOLDEN SPACE NEEDLE AWARD – BEST ACTRESS
Elsie Fisher, Eighth Grade (USA 2018)
First runner-up: Rhaechyl Walker, My Name is Myeisha (USA 2018)
Second runner-up: Sophia Mitri Schloss, Sadie (USA 2018)
Third runner-up: Thomasin Harcourt McKenzie, Leave No Trace (USA 2018)
Fourth runner-up: Ana Brun, The Heiresses (Paraguay/Uruguay/Germany/Brazil/Norway/France 2018)

GOLDEN SPACE NEEDLE AWARD – BEST SHORT FILM
Emergency, directed by Carey Williams (USA 2017)
First runner-up: About the Birds and the Bees, directed by J.J. Vanhanen (Finland 2017)
Second runner-up: Wishing Box, directed by Wenli Zhang, Nan Li (USA 2017)
Third runner-up: Cats Cradle, directed by Jonathan Napolitano (USA 2018)
Fourth runner-up: Wave, directed by Benjamin Cleary, TJ O’Grady Peyton (Ireland 2017)

LENA SHARPE AWARD FOR PERSISTENCE OF VISION
Presented by Women in Film – Seattle
Dana Nachman, Pick of the Litter (USA 2017)

This award is given to the female director’s film that receives the most votes in public balloting at the Festival. Lena Sharpe was co-founder and managing director of Seattle’s Festival of Films by Women Directors and a KCTS-TV associate who died in a plane crash while on assignment. As a tribute to her efforts in bringing the work of women filmmakers to prominence, SIFF created this special award and asked Women in Film – Seattle to bestow it.