It was a night at the Oscars at Liberty High Performing Arts Center on March 19 for the 2nd annual Wentzville Film Festival. The doors for the event, themed “Capture Your World”, opened at 6:30 p.m. to a red carpet full of journalism students that served as paparazzi photographers and reporters to welcome the nominees. Students entered in the festival ranged all the way from elementary to high school.

The evening was full of entertaining, engaging and thought provoking videos created by Wentzville School District students. Throughout the night, they went through and showed the winning videos for each category.

Timberland students Sammie Lammert, Jace Nielsen, Sara Phillips and Tori Smith hosted the event. They awarded the winners their trophies and gave amusing introductions to each category of films. The categories of the videos entered in the event were: Informational, Instructional, Music Video, News Package, PSA/Commercial, Sports, Story, and Animated Story. At one point in the night they even sang a popular song from “Friends” called ”Smelly Cat.”

Sam Ayala, a student at Prairie View Elementary, had two films that were being honored at the event. He had his film called “The Chase” entered into the animated story category and he was also in his class film “The Missing Desks” which was entered into the story category.

“I’m a little nervous to be here tonight,” Ayala said. “My favorite part about making the films was that I got to work with all my classmates.”

Lauren Stumpf, a senior at Liberty, also had two films entered. Her films were “Daylight Night” and “Ratchets and Robots.”

“I feel pretty excited to be here. This is my first time I have ever been to a film festival or ever been honored, so it is pretty cool,” Stumpf said.

The night closed with a round of applause for all the people who helped made the night possible. All the winners and finalists should feel very proud of themselves, all the films shown and mentioned were incredible. 

For more information on the Liberty Film Festival winners, click here: https://lhstoday.org/7417/news/celebrating-young-talent/