AwesomeMan film wins award in Vienna film festival

A short film created by indie filmmaker Asher Lopez has received an award at a European film festival.

The two-minute film ‘AwesomeMan’, described by Lopez, 20, as “Cayman’s and the Caribbean’s first locally-produced superhero short film made on no budget” was nominated as a finalist in the Ardelion International indie film and screenplay festival in Vienna.

Award winner

At a gala ceremony earlier this month, Lopez was awarded the accolade of Best Actor with the award being announced by Hollywood actor Josh Helman of the X-Men series of films.

Recently returned from the festival, Lopez said that the award “means everything to me. It’s years of hard work. It’s crazy that this all started from a 10-year-old me making a drawing and an iMovie trailer on a mini iPad.”

Lopez said that ‘AwesomeMan’ is breaking new ground for Caribbean cinema and puts Cayman on the cinematic map. “It was made in Cayman by Caymanians, but it certainly has global appeal,” said Lopez. “So that’s very validating that this is going to work.”

Lopez is now working on a full-length feature film version of ‘AwesomeMan’ and has spent the last six months working on the script, which has already received high praise from his producer Badir Awe of Awesome Productions.

As well as getting stuck into pre-production on the film, Lopez is now actively seeking out high-net-worth individuals for major financing of the film with interest already boosted by his recent award. This filmmaker doesn’t just have one film in mind though; he is envisaging a whole “Lopez Cinematic Universe” to follow in the footsteps of Marvel and DC.

“It’s going to be a long-term franchise venture which will be economically significant for the Cayman Islands,” he says, “because what it will do is open up a lot of new job opportunities for local and international talent, both crew and [on-screen] characters surrounding the individual heroes’ lives.”

Lopez is already drawing up a wish list of Hollywood A-list talent he wants to work with but is staying tight-lipped on names for the moment. For now, fans of Lopez’s work will hopefully be able to see more at next year’s CayFest festival.