2015 - Claire Carré

I next brought the film to our first genre festival, Other Worlds Austin. Only in its second year, the festival was small in scale but big in heart and festival team spirit. Only at Other Worlds would I end up taking photos with someone else also wearing a Star Trek uniform. It was great to show our science fiction film to a crowd made up entirely of sci-fi fans, who really got it. Embers was the Closing Night Film and had the honor to win the Inaugural Mary Shelley Award. Our actress Greta Fernández won Best Actress in a Feature Film. The most touching moment of my festival experiences so far came from an audience member at Other Worlds Austin who had previously experienced amnesia after coming out of a coma. He told me that my film captured the confusion of what it felt like to not remember and to feel glimmers of meaning without being able to hold onto something specific. He insisted that I needed to keep making movies because he wanted to see them.

-Claire Carré; director/co-writer, EMBERS