Meridian Hill Pictures and Brandon Kramer had the distinct honor of being awarded Best Director for CITY OF TREES at the third annual IndieCapitol Awards and the ninth annual Chesapeake Film Festival.

IndieCapitol Awards

Our new and first feature film, CITY OF TREES, produced alongside Chicago’s legendary Kartemquin Films and Magic Labs Media, was nominated for five awards at IndieCapitol Awards on October 9th: best documentary feature, best director, best cinematography, best editor, and best sound design.

Wow!!! I am speechless. Thank you, thank you, thank you to the @IndieCapitol awards for this incredible honor of the best director award. https://t.co/ZMmHOIRuaG

— Brandon Kramer (@brandon_kramer) October 9, 2016

Congratulations to the other winners and nominees from IndieCapitol Awards, which included: 45: A Rock and Roll Revival for Best Documentary Feature, Dinner with an Alchemist for Best Narrative Feature, and Parables of War for Best Documentary Short.  

We are humbled by the support of the local DC film community and to be recognized by an organization that champions locally produced independent films. Our sincerest thanks to the IndieCapitol and Reel Independent Film Extravaganza for creating platforms that inspire and support locally produced films. We could not be more grateful for the greater DMV film community.

Chesapeake Film Festival

We are deeply grateful to Chesapeake Film Festival for awarding Brandon Kramer the Best Director for a Documentary Film! All of the volunteers could not have been more kind, the audience engagement and questions were thoughtful, even the weather was perfect. It was such a heart-warming and enjoyable experience.

The Chesapeake Film Festival has always been a very important festival to us given that we grew up in DC/ Maryland taking trips to the Eastern Shore. As young filmmakers, an award like this truly makes a huge impact for the film and our future efforts to make other independent documentaries like CITY OF TREES around social justice issues. 

Christian Oh, Executive Director of the DC Asian Pacific American Film Festival, tweeted it best:

"DC is home to an incredibly talented filmmaking community. What are we going to do with this talent?"

We think it's to continue to create thought-provoking films. :)