The award winners for the 2008 edition of the New York Asian Film Festival have been announced and, with a drum roll please, here they are:

This year the New York Asian Film Festival gave two sets of awards this year. One was the Audience Award that we give every year, selected by the audience, then, for the first time ever, we had a jury who gave out five awards, including a Grand Prize. The winners of the jury awards for the New York Asian Film Festival 2008 are: - Winner - New York Asian Film Festival Grand Prize SAD VACATION directed by Shinji Aoyama - Honorable Mention and Best Ensemble Cast SPARROW STRAWBERRY SHORTCAKES - Best Visual Achievement Lee Myung-Se for M Joko Anwar for KALA - Outstanding Achievement Koji Wakamatsu for UNITED RED ARMY - Best Debut Feature Ryo Nakajima for THIS WORLD OF OURS For the Audience Award we would like to list the top five winners: 1) FINE, TOTALLY FINE (Winner of the Audience Award) 2) ALWAYS: SUNSET ON THIRD STREET 2 3) KING NARESUAN 2 4) PUBLIC ENEMY RETURNS 5) SPARROW Congratulations to all the winners, and a final thank you to our jurors: Vincent Musetto (film editor at the New York Post), John Mhiripiri (Coordinator/Big Cheese of the Anthology Film Archives), Dave Fear (film critic for Time Out New York), Maitland McDonagh (film critic for TVGuide.com and author of several books on film) and Benson Lee (director of PLANET B-BOY).