Two short films from France won top prizes at the 15th annual Worldwide Short Film Festival, which held its awards ceremony yesterday afternoon during a picnic at the Canadian Film Centre.

Nicolas Silhol’s My Name Is Dominic, a 20-minute French drama about a single mother who discovers the consequences of weak parental discipline, received the C.O.R.E. Digital Pictures Award for Best Live Action Short. The award makes the film eligible for an Academy Award nomination next January.

And the Telus Audience Choice Award went to Paul Rondin Is… Paul Rondin, Frédéric Vin’s very, very funny short about a movie-trailer announcer (imagine the French version of Don LaFontaine) who can’t turn off his professional persona – not even in social situations.

Several of this year’s award winners, including Dominic and Rondin, were screened last night in a “Festival Award Winners” series at the Royal Ontario Museum. The screening also included three winners from the CFC’s ShortsNonStop Festival: Tor Kristofferson’s Enough, from Britain; Karen Weiss’ Bad Head Day, from Mexico; and Clemens Kogler’s Herr Bar, from Austria.

There were several WSFF award categories strictly for Canadian shorts as well.

The award for Best Canadian Short went to Ky Nam Le Duc’s Land of Men, the story of a Quebecois policewoman facing a moral dilemma after she arrests a Mexican illegal immigrant. And Aparna Kapur won the Jackson-Triggs Award for Best Emerging Canadian Filmmaker for Amma, an abstract animated film about a woman’s lifelong bond with her grandmother.

Another Canadian winner (for Best Experimental Short) was Pedro Pires’ Danse Macabre, a visually stunning work of art that follows the motions and contortions of a woman’s corpse, from death through embalming to cremation. With its eerily beautiful images, balletic movement, Kubrickian compositions and operatic musical score, Danse Macabre is an eight-minute feast for the senses.

The festival chose Hanna Heilborn and David Aronowitsch’s Slaves as Best Animated Short (another Oscar-qualifying award). A production of Denmark and Sweden, Slaves uses stylized rotoscoped drawings over real interview footage of two former Sudanese militia slaves, Machiek and Abuk. The children, respectively 15 and nine, tell their stories of maltreatment with calm frankness.

The award for Best Documentary Short went to Australia’s Skin (Rhys Graham), about a man with a full-body tattoo who leaves his skin to an art gallery after his death.

Kevin Drew’s The Water received the Kodak Award for Best Cinematography in a Canadian Short.