"Broken Vessels" Wins Top LAIFF Prize Amid Acquisitions Buzz

"Broken Vessels" Wins Top LAIFF Prize Amid Acquisitions Buzz

by Eugene Hernandez

Scott Ziehl's feature "Broken Vessels," the story of a paramedic
who gets sucked into an underworld of drugs while trying to escape his
haunted past, won the Audience Award at the 1998 Los Angeles
Independent Film Festival, the event's top prize. Filmmaker Rory
Kelly won the directing prize for his movie "Some Girls" and Rocky
Collins won the audience award for screenwriting, honoring his
script for his film "Pants on Fire." Also awarded last night was the
festival's Indie Supporter Award to Eric Stoltz, producer and star of
the closing film, "Mr. Jealousy," written and directed by Noah Baumbach.
The prizes were presented last night prior to the festival's closing
night gala here at the DGA in LA.

"Vessels" which is produced by Roxana Zal and filmmaker Scott Ziehl,
stars Jason London and Todd Field. It played before full house crowds
over the weekend and has developed considerable buzz among distribution
executives. indieWIRE has learned that the film screened yesterday
morning at a private showing for the head of a leading studio specialty
division and another distributor screening is scheduled for this afternoon
here in Los Angeles. Festival organizers spent time yesterday
releasing prints to local acquisitions executives at companys throughout
the city, as distribs scrambled to take a second look at some of the
festival's hotter films. Among the prints that began making the rounds
late Sunday and yesterday were "1999," "Bongwater," "Claudine's Return,"
"Cleopatra's Second Husband," "The Cruise," "Some Girls," and "With or
Without You."