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MFA Film Students and Alumni Win Best 48-Hour Film at Magnolia Independent Film Festival

Congrats!

MFA Film alumni Zachary Calhoun (CO’25), Jesse Scales (CO’25), and Andrew Sloth (CO’25), and current students Delaire Gackle (CO’26) and Eric Walters (CO’26) won Best 48-Hour Film at the 29th Annual Magnolia Independent Film Festival this February.

The Magnolia Independent Film Festival is Mississippi’s first and longest-running film festival. Teams of filmmakers were challenged with randomly-assigned prompts for their annual 48 hour Film Competition.The team of MFA Film students & alums banded together with their assigned filmmaking prompts, and created their short film Garry the Marshmallow, which won The Mag’s 48-Hour Film Competition and was exhibited alongside other categories at the festival’s screenings last month.

See The Mag’s winners announcement featuring Garry the Marshmallow on Instagram, and check out details on the film below:

Logline: Two brothers just can’t get along, so their mother comes up with a plan… a solid yet soft, sugary, and gelatin plan.

Randomly Assigned Prompts:

  • Genre: Family Film
  • Prop: Marshmallow
  • Dialogue: “Wait did that really just happen?”
  • Character: Sherman or Shirley Kane

Crew:

Written by: Zachary Calhoun, Andrew Sloth, Jesse Scales

Directed by: Zachary Calhoun

Director of Photography: Eric Walters

1st AC: Delaire Gackle

Sound: Jack Perrott

Script Supervisor: Savannah Treu

Props: Andrew Bassett

Editor: Delaire Gackle

Composer: Jack Perrott

Title Card by: Caitlin Ruffed

Cast: 

  • “Vernon” – Jesse Scales
  • “Sherman” – Andrew Sloth

Photos courtesy of Zachary Calhoun