Morrie Tan’s ‘The Visit’ Brings Home Top Prize at Cartoons Underground’s Golden Durian Awards2 min read

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Southeast Asia’s first animation festival Cartoons Underground 2021 concluded over the past weekend with the announcement of its Golden Durian Awards winners, the winner of the festival’s Best Pitch Prize, and celebrated its 10th edition with the festival’s first NFT drop on OpenSea.

This year’s Golden Durian Awards was presided by judges Eric Khoo, Siqi Song, Kyle Balda and Lim Jia Ying. Morrie Tan’s The Visit stood tall, bringing home the Best Animation and Audience Choice awards. The animated film is also the winner of the Best Animation and Best Art Direction prizes at this year’s National Youth Film Awards (NYFA) in the Open Youth Category.

Similarly, the winner of the Best Animation award in NYFA’s Student Category, Full Circle by Su Xian Yeow, also bagged the Best Singapore Student Animation prize at Cartoons Underground.

Special Mentions went to Liza Desyatkova’s Don’t Think About Her and Javon Chan’s A Fish for a Friend.

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For the second year running, Cartoons Underground held its Animated Visions Story Development Lab, in partnership with SCAPE and LASALLE College of the Arts. Six projects were developed this year under the mentorship of award-winning directors Jerrold Chong, and Harry and Henry Zhuang, together with a series of masterclasses and lectures with Siqi Song, Tan Wei Keong, Jacinth Tan and Carlene Tan.

Two weekends of lectures, masterclasses and consultation sessions with the mentors culminated in the Animated Visions: Pitch Day where participants got the chance to pitch their project to an esteemed panel of judges, made up of Jacinth Tan, Mark Wee, Ervin Han, Tan Si En, and Juan Foo.

The Best Pitch Prize would be awarded to Murphy in Retrograde by Kimberly Wee, Wai Ziying and Tam Simone. The series follows a young woman who romps around a time-bending space station in search of an elderly man but is instead faced with the strange surprise of running into all of her exes.

For the first time, the Jury has also awarded a Special Mention Award to My Math Teacher is a Robot?! by Luther Chuah. A school weirdo sees his teacher detach his head in an empty classroom and he tries to convince the school that their teacher is an evil robot before it’s too late.