SINGAPORE - A coming-of-age film won top honours tonight (Aug 2) at the first ever National Youth Film Awards (NYFA). The film, called November, about a youth dealing with herpes, won Best Picture and is directed by 22-year-old Shane Lim, a Ngee Ann Polytechnic graduate with a diploma in film, sound and video. The 15-minute short, also took home the Best Direction and Best Screenplay awards (Lim, who currently serving National Service, co-wrote it with Angelica Ho).

It’s yet another feather in the cap for the young film-makers: November premiered at the 25th Singapore International Film Festival and previously won Best Script at the 6th Singapore Short Film Awards. It was also nominated for Best Short Film at the 31st Los Angeles Asian Pacific Film Festival.

The film’s subject matter was drawn from Lim’s own real-life experience - he had a herpes scare when he was 19 years old, which turned out to be a false alarm.

Celebrated film-maker and jury member Royston Tan said November was his favourite film. “The film-maker demonstrated maturity handling the social issue without sensationalising. A well-deserved win,” he said.

“I am so grateful for NYFA because here, the attention we receive for this (awards) is relevant to us,” Lim told TODAY. “And I can turn this into opportunities, meet people and see what may come after. I am hoping I will get more opportunities and real opportunities to work with people in the industry.”

The NYFA is a film-making competition organised by *Scape and local film project consultancy management and training company Sinema Media, which aims to establish a benchmark in national excellence and talent identification between the film industry and Institutions of Higher Learning (IHL) that offer film-related and animation courses.

“The NYFA ... recognises the best of Singapore’s budding film-makers, and provides a platform for these talents to showcase their work. It’s time we recognise them at a national level,” said Mr Lawrence Wong, Minister for Culture, Community and Youth at the awards ceremony. “Through the NYFA, we hope to find and nurture more talented young film-makers, so that the Singapore film industry will continue to flourish and grow.”

Out of 238 submissions received, 47 films by students from nine local IHLs were nominated, selected by a three-member panel that included NYFA awards director and Sinema founder partner/managing director Nicholas Chee. The final 11-member judging panel, which included Tan, film-maker Jack Neo and mm2 Entertainment chief content officer Ng Say Yong, chose the winners across 14 categories - including Best Editing, Best Visual Effects and Best Production Design.

Other winners included Iza Zainuddin and Navin Kumar from Temasek Polytechnic who won Best Documentary with Journey Of A Kavadi Bearer; and Andre Quek, Abdul Hadi bin Abdul Wahab and Vivien Tan from Nanyang Technological University Singapore, who won Best Animated Film with Princess.

All the winners took home trophies, cash prizes of up to S$2,000 per award; and most importantly, guaranteed mentorship opportunities with industry stakeholders.

The NTU, which had the most nominations, also secured the most wins; with five for Best Animated film, Best Cinematogrpahy, Best Visual Effects, Best Original Music and Best Production design.