Aussie Directors Make Finals Of Ridley Scott's Film Comp

Two Australian short films, Bat Eyes and Scruples have made it to the top ten in the international Your Film Festival competition, a YouTube based competition which is supported by Hollywood powerhouse director Sir Ridley Scott.

Australia is the only country other than US that has two finalists amongst the top ten from the initial 15,000 films.

They will be judged at the Venice Film Festival in September by a jury headed by Sir Ridley Scott and Prometheus' Michael Fassbender. The overall winner wins a US$500,000 production deal with Scott Free Films the production vehicle of directing brothers Ridley and Tony Scott.

Bat Eyes began as a monologue about teenage bullying by playwright Jessica Bellamy who studied Playwriting at NIDA and is currently the Griffin Playwriting Australia Associate Playwright. Bat Eyes was developed through Australian Theatre for Young People via The Fresh Ink new writing program and is directed by Damien Power.

Scruples is written and directed by Adrian Powers and is about two 'cleaners' for a criminal organisation. Scruples won the People Choice Award at the Bondi Short Film Festival and earned Powers the Best Director Award at the Melbourne Angry Film Festival.

The competition takes place Sunday 2 September at the Venice Film Festival.

The Your Film Festival channel on Youtube has 41,534 subscribers and 3,846,553 video views