ABOUT

AGBO's “No Sleep ‘til Film Fest” is a global short filmmaking festival that invites filmmakers to make a short movie, three minutes or less, in only 48 hours. The winners and honorable mentions are selected by the Russo Brothers and creative executives at AGBO. Part of AGBO’s commitment to championing emerging content creators, the two-day festival challenges participants to make bite-sized films for a chance to win prizes and mentorship from the independent studio. The festival is open world-wide for filmmakers of all levels, and the challenge requires participants to make a film within the time constraint based on a creative prompt released from AGBO. In the three years of the festival, “No Sleep ‘til Film Fest” has received over 2000 submissions from over 60 countries.

The judges selected three winning films to premiere across the AGBOVERSE as well as AGBO’s social channels, and winners received prizes provided in sponsorship by RED Digital Camera, GoPro, Microsoft, Blackmagic Design, Final Draft, AGBO, and Red Bull. All three winners join the AGBO Storytellers Collective, an alumni network of participants from other AGBO fellowship programs. The current Storytellers Collective members also participate in judging, selecting an additional winning filmmaker to receive the “AGBO Storytellers Collective Award” and join the alumni network.

2023 Winners

TIME OF YOUR LIFE College is meant to be the time of your life, but for one freshman, it's a lonely journey as her life unfolds solely on her phone screen.

Directed by Darren Hinchy (Toronto, Canada) Born and raised in Ireland, Darren Hinchy grew up with a passionate love of movies that led him to move to Toronto, Canada to pursue a career in Film. He has accumulated nearly a decade of experience in the film industry, with credits ranging from music videos to Oscar winning movies and everything in between. If he is not working on a TV show or movie he is most likely to be found watching them.

JUST A SEC! Can there be something in a person's life for which they would halt their own funeral?

Directed by Tanya Lialina and Teodor Klimov (Tbilisi, Georgia) Tanya is a professionally trained theatre and film actress with over 10 years of experience working in the field. She was born in Ukraine and is 29 years old at present. Tanya writes scripts and has also directed several short films, one of which was featured at many international festivals. Тeo graduated from Saint-Petersburg State Theater Arts Academy as an actor and director. Since then, he had many parts in different performances in Saint-Petersburg Theaters. As a director, he’s made many plays and short-films which have received awards at festivals. Since 2022, Tanya and Teo have been living and working in Georgia and are going to continue studies for a film director in some of the international universities.

02:00 MINUTES As two best friends wait for the results of a pregnancy test, they imagine different outcomes in possible future timelines.

Directed by Grace McLeod (California, United States) Grace McLeod (she/her) is a queer playwright and screenwriter from New York City. Her play HERLAND received a National New Play Network Rolling World Premiere in 2019 with productions in Chicago, San Diego, and Los Angeles. As a playwright, Grace has developed work with The Playwrights Realm (2023 commission), Goodman Theatre, Ashland New Plays Festival, and many more. She was a 2014 Tribeca Film Fellow and her shorts have screened at festivals across the country. As a screenwriter, she currently has projects in development with HartBeat Productions, HappyBad Bungalow, and Temple Hill Entertainment.

EON'S ECHO Paris, 2047. Willing to risk everything to bring back the love of his life from the dead, Quentin inexorably faces the dire consequences of his quest…

Directed by Maxence Cazorla & Godefroy Ryckewaert (Paris, France) Maxence Cazorla split his life between Paris and Los Angeles from 2012 – 2018, where he cut his teeth under the mentorship of Mr. Vincent Chase. After landing his first role in an independent feature film, he started writing, directing and acting in his own short films which received international prizes, including best director and best actor. Godefroy Ryckewaert has expertise in action design and filmmaking. In addition to his accomplishments in martial arts, he directed numerous award-winning action-packed short films. Furthermore, Ryckewaert's involvement in major productions such as "The Witcher," "The Crow," and "Back in Action" as a fight choreographer and "previz director" highlights his expertise in crafting impactful and visually stunning fight scenes.

2022 Winners

P E N A simple pen has the power to create life, cause death, and everything in between.

Directed by Waldo Levendal (South Africa) Waldo Levendal is a filmmaker based in Cape Town, South Africa. Waldo works as a freelance filmmaker and videographer. He is a self-taught creative who is in the early stages of his filmmaking career, with this being his second festival overall. He won Best Cinematography for short film "Wonder" at the International 1 Minute Film Festival. Having always loved films he decided to leave his corporate job to fulfill his dream of filmmaking full time. His dream is to one day direct a James Bond film with Roger Deakins as DOP.

TRADE A woman is abducted and held for ransom. A trade must take place.

Directed by Joel Phillips (Australia) Joel Phillips is an emerging filmmaker and actor based in Sydney, Australia. He has worked on a broad range of productions and has shared the screen with people like Chris Hemsworth and Jared Leto (Home & Away - Seven Network / Stay Tuned - ABC). Joel is passionate about telling original stories in innovative and entertaining ways and is currently building his body of work as a director.

MOVIE, THE FILM: A MOTION PICTURE A filmmaker forces a bot to watch hours of romance, action, drama, and horror movies to create the world's first AI-produced film. This is the result. Perhaps creativity should be left to humans.

Directed by Clay Lacey (Los Angeles, California) Clay Lacey is an up-and-coming director from Apple Valley, California. In 2020, during the loneliness of the pandemic, Clay decided to pursue his longtime passion for creating narrative films. Since that time he has participated in numerous competitions and has won several best film and best director awards. Through trial and error, YouTube tutorials, and online courses, he is a self-taught filmmaker. He believes in gaining knowledge of every aspect of filmmaking and currently writes, directs, shoots, and edits each of his projects. Clay is currently working on a horror web series for his 2 million TikTok followers who love his paranormal first responder stories, and Clay is in pre-production on his first micro-budget feature film.

DREAMER 21B Have you ever woken up from the weirdest dream and been left wondering how your mind even got that creative? Dream 21-B explores the reason why.

Directed by Sofía Isabella and Ashwin Noel (United Kingdom) Sofía and Ashwin are young and emerging directors based in South London. Having met in Sixth-Form, when they were both at completely different points in our career journeys, they progressed to where we are today. Together, they currently run their growing production company, ANfilms. At ANfilms, they direct a mix of short films and music videos although the ultimate goal for them is to be film directors and to one-day direct full-length feature films together.

2021 Winners

HAPPY DAY A Polish cleaning woman makes her way through the workday, struggling with the Birthday unit on her English learning podcast. Through consistency and determination, she realizes the magic of understanding.

Directed by Kali Davis (Los Angeles, California) Kali Davis is a southern Californian native. She has recently graduated from The American Film Institute Conservatory. Davis has worked on various independent short films in Europe and the U.S. Before AFI, Davis studied filmmaking in Prague, Czech Republic, at FAMU. More recently, Davis co-wrote, directed, and co-produced a short film, "A Disagreement About Flies," currently in the festival circuit.

PINEAPPLE PINEAPPLE is a surreal action comedy that explores the blurred line of reality and film, in a world where everyone seems to be a filmmaker, one director has to fight to upload his short film to meet the deadline in a 48 hour film contest.

Directed by Stephen Ford (Los Angeles, California) Stephen Ford’s love for creating films began when he was 8 years old, creating short films with a camcorder and his neighborhood friends. Being a kid with a mother in the military, he moved around the United States growing up in Alaska, Alabama, California, Kansas and Florida. Eventually they made their way to Burbank, CA; in which he skipped around various Disney, Fox and Nickelodeon sitcoms. This led him to starring in the American adaptation of Kamen Rider Ryuki as the lead of CW's Kamen Rider Dragon Knight. Since then he has appeared in various indie films and hit television shows like ABC's Private Practice and Desperate Housewives, MTV's Teen Wolf and Freeform's Switch At Birth. He took a break from acting to focus on directing in 2016 when he partnered with the Warner Brothers YouTube company Machinima as their lead narrative show runner to create original narrative content based on video game properties like Ubisoft's Rainbow Six: Siege and The Division. Leading him to create Ascender Productions, a small production company with a focus on creating high quality, low budget narrative content, blending his love for gaming and cinema.

MY HOUSE Dave, a 12-year-old boy, speaks to the things he loves about his house.

Directed by Adam Dumaguin (Philippines) Adam Dumaguin is a freelance photographer, videographer, and film student based in the Philippines. He received a Talent Scholarship for Fine Arts Bachelor’s degree in the New York Film Academy based on his portfolio back in 2020. Adam is very hands-on with his production process in filmmaking. He writes, directs, shoots, and edits all of his short films. Today, Adam is studying at the Mapua University as a first-year Digital Film student in The Philippines.