Wonderful World Wins Best Documentary and an Audience Award

We have some exciting news to share from Gold Leader Films.

Our documentary Wonderful World recently won Best Documentary at the PrairieFest Film Showcase and the Audience Award at the ATX Short Film Showcase.

We are incredibly grateful to both festivals for selecting the film, giving it a place on the screen, and recognizing a project that has meant so much to us from the beginning.

About Wonderful World

Wonderful World follows Clint, a man living with ALS whose body is being taken from him by an incredibly unforgiving disease, while his spirit seems determined not to follow.

The documentary begins with the shock of his diagnosis and follows the daily reality of living with ALS. But just as importantly, it follows the people around him. His family and friends continue to show up for him again and again, often in simple ways that end up meaning the most.

The film eventually builds toward a recording session that still feels pretty remarkable to us.

Clint is temporarily removed from his ventilator and joins his family, friends, and members of the national touring production of The Great Gatsby to record What a Wonderful World. The session brought together an incredible group of people for something that was much bigger than simply recording a song.

The recording project also received coverage from BroadwayWorld, which shared the collaboration between Clint and members of The Great Gatsby touring company.

For a documentary about a very difficult part of life, there is a surprising amount of joy in it. That was something we wanted to preserve from the beginning.

Thank You to PrairieFest and ATX Short Film Showcase

Winning an award is exciting, but having people sit in a theater, watch Clint's story, and connect with it means just as much to us.

Thank you to the PrairieFest Film Showcase for awarding Wonderful World Best Documentary, and thank you to the ATX Short Film Showcase and its audience for choosing the film for the Audience Award.

As filmmakers, you spend so much of the process alone with the footage. You shoot it, organize it, edit it, change it, watch it again, and eventually get so close to the project that it can be difficult to know how an audience is going to respond.

Getting to see this film begin its life outside of our editing room has been incredibly rewarding.

And thankfully, this isn't the end of its festival run.

More Film Festivals Ahead

We have been blessed to have Wonderful World selected for several more film festivals, and we will be sharing those updates as they happen.

We're excited to attend more screenings, meet other filmmakers, and see where this film goes next. Hopefully there will be a few more awards to talk about along the way.

We also want to use some future posts to get more into the filmmaking side of Wonderful World liek the cameras and film equipment we used, our lighting setups, how we approached sound, interviews, the recording session, and some of the decisions that went into turning all of that footage into the finished documentary.

For now, though, we mostly just want to say thank you.

Thank you to the festivals that have selected the film. Thank you to the audiences who have watched it. And most importantly, thank you to Clint, his family, and everyone who trusted us to tell this story.

An Award-Winning Texas Video Production Studio

For us at Gold Leader Films, these awards are also an exciting milestone for our studio.

We are a Texas video production company working throughout Boerne, San Antonio, Austin, Fredericksburg, Kerrville, and the Texas Hill Country. Our work ranges from documentaries and interviews to commercial video production, branded films, event filmmaking, and other projects where there is a real story worth telling.

Being able to now call Gold Leader Films an award-winning video production studio is something we're extremely thankful for, but we're even more excited about what we get to make next.

If you're looking for a videographer in Boerne, San Antonio, or Austin, or you're considering a documentary, commercial, interview-driven film, or another project that needs more than just a collection of pretty shots, we'd love to hear what you're working on.

And we'll have more news about Wonderful World soon.