‘An Irish Goodbye’ Oscar Winners Tom Berkeley, Ross White to Be Honored at London’s HollyShorts Film Fest (Exclusive)

One of the world’s most prestigious short film festivals, HollyShorts, is coming to London.

HollyShorts will hold its first-ever London edition as part of the L.A.-based festival’s 20th anniversary year and, The Hollywood Reporter can reveal, will present HollyShorts Honoree Awards to a slew of Oscar-winning and Oscar-nominated British and Irish short filmmakers.

Recipients of the HollyShorts Honoree Award include Tom Berkeley and Ross White, who won an Oscar in 2023 for their short film An Irish Goodbye; Chris Overton, who won an Oscar in 2018 for The Silent Child; Misan Harriman, who was nominated for an Academy Award this year for The After; and Jamie Donoughue, who was nominated in 2016 for Shok. 

The event will also present a special Trailblazer Award to actor James Martin, whose pivotal role in An Irish Goodbye led to him being the first star with Down Syndrome to win at the Academy Awards. At the beginning of this year, Martin was awarded the MBE — Member of the Order of the British Empire — in the King’s New Year’s Honours List for his services to drama.

Last year, the HollyShorts Film Festival was granted its fourth Oscar-qualifying award for documentary short. For the first time, the festival has also been accredited by BAFTA, meaning that films selected for HollyShorts will be eligible to submit to the BAFTA awards. Several HollyShorts winners have gone on to take the top prize in the shorts categories at the Academy Awards, including Riz Ahmed’s The Long Goodbye and Guy Nattiv’s Skin.

These Honoree Awards and Trailblazer Award will be presented in-person at HollyShorts London’s opening-night reception on Dec. 6. The full London edition will run Dec. 6-8.

HollyShorts London sponsors include Cotrini Skin, Kodak, Panavision, JeanBookNerd, Miller Insurance, Company 3, Alta Global Media, 88th Street Productions, Shotdeck, IMGN and Kevork Law.