Among the award winners for the 14th annual Slamdance Film Festival was Tony Mosher, who won the festival’s horror screenplay competition with “The Punished.”

The prize includes a production deal with Angel Baby Entertainment and Maverick Films which will make the film based on Mosher’s screenplay. Mosher also receives an upfront payment of $10,000 against five percent of the film’s budget, plus net profits participation on the movie and payments for any sequels made of the motion picture. Production of the completed script will occur during the ensuing months, with the intent of having the film’s world premiere during a forthcoming Slamdance Film Festival.

Winning the Grand Jury Award for Best Narrative Feature was Tom Quinn’s The New Year Parade. Other major winners included Greg Kohs’s “Song Sung Blue” for the Grand Jury Award for Best Documentary Feature; Andrew McPhillips’s “Blood Will Tell” for Best Animated Short; C. A. Voros’s “The Ladies” for Best Documentary Short, Michael Langan’s “Doxology” for Best Experimental Short, and Daniel Mulloy’s “Son” for Best Narrative Short.

Audience Award winners included the following: Ryan Piotrowicz’s “The Project” for best narrative feature; Greg Kohs’s “Song Sung Blue” for best documentary feature; Gloria Kim’s “Rock Garden” for best anarchy film, and Jonathan Lisecki’s “Woman in Burka” for the Spirit of Slamdance Award (selected by peer filmmakers).

Writer Awards included the following: Anthony Meindl’s “The Wonder Girls” for best feature length screenplay; Will Hartman’s “Easy Pickins” for best short screenplay; Barbara Marshall’s “Stage Six Pandemic” for best teleplay; Damian Lahey and Ian Ogden for “Child in the Dark” (creative excellence award in the festival horror screenplay competition).

Sascha Drews and Ezra Krybus won the Kodak Vision Award for Best Cinematography on “Portage.”

The prizes carried more than $200,000 in cash total. This year’s festival which included fewer than 100 program slots brought more than 3,500 submissions from more than 25 countries. The feature competition was limited to first-time filmmakers working with production budgets of $1 million or less.

Thus far, the Slamdance film “Jack Brooks: Monster Slayer” has been acquired for distribution by Anchor Bay Entertainment. It is expected that at least four other 2008 Slamdance films will also be acquired soon.

“We are incredibly pleased with the results of this year’s Festival,” said Peter Baxter, president and co-founder of Slamdance. “We judge whatever success we may have, however, by the accomplishments of our filmmakers. Our stated goal of premiering new films by first-time writers and directors working within the creative confines of limited budgets remains intact, even as we dramatically grow each year, but it’s all in support of our filmmakers. Shepherding bright new talent is the main reason for our existence, and we could not be happier that many of our filmmaker’s efforts are paying off.”