Student film wins “Best Story” award at local festival

At the sixth annual Dallastown Spring Shorts Film Festival, Central York seniors Kyle Rose, Belmin Kalkan, Daniel Brenkert and Hunter Moon won the title of Best Story. They were also nominated for six other categories: Best Acting, Best Directing, Most Inspirational, Best Editing, Best Cinematography and Best of Festival.

Their film, “The Diagnosis,” was filmed and edited over the course of only four days. Written by Moon, the story follows a high school student, also played by Moon, who is diagnosed with cancer and must accept the changes that he faces.

After being informed of the competition, the four students began planning. Kalkan said, “We were skeptical about it at first.”

“There were a lot of rules and regulations we had to follow,” Moon said. Moon’s past work has typically involved comedy, so they wanted to do something different. “What if we did a story with cancer? What if it happened to a high school student?” Moon had asked. These questions spurred the story and coaxed it into being over the course of about a month.

“We wanted something emotional,” Rose said.

Moon said, “We wanted to do it from the perspective of a high school student who had everything going for him.”

Before entering the competition, they decided to check out the previous year’s competitors. “We looked at the entries from last year and nothing really stood out to us,” Rose said. “This year, there was more high quality work.”

Despite the tough competitors, “The Diagnosis” still pulled through to win Best Story. “We weren’t really expecting to win. We weren’t expecting to get nominated for anything,” Moon said. The four days of shooting and editing were enough, however.

“We had the most nominations of everyone there. We were good enough to be thought of,” said Rose.

This competition was the first the students had officially entered.

Moon said, “It was a fun experience and a great way to end senior year.”

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