Academy honors Chinese filmmakers at Student Oscars

Chinese filmmakers were among those honored at the 46th Student Academy Awards ceremony held last week at the Samuel Goldwyn Theater in Beverly Hills, California.

The Student Academy Awards is an international student film competition conducted by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and the Academy Foundation. This year's event presented 16 Student Academy Awards.

Chinese student filmmaker, Sun Yifan, won the gold medal in the Documentary (International Film Schools) category for her film Family Squared which follows a Chinese girl, Lola, who was adopted into a Belgian family as an infant, fulfill her dream of reuniting with her biological parents, when Lola's two families met for the first time last year.

Sun was born in Hohhot in the Inner Mongolia autonomous region in 1988 and received a Bachelor's degree in film studies at the Beijing Film Academy in 2009.

Because of her admiration for film director Krzysztof Kieslowski, Sun now attends the Lodz Film School in Poland.

She describes her documentary as a cultural and emotional journey between East and West.

"The love for Lola links two families in two faraway continents, forming a big, happy family," she says.

"I'm so happy to win a gold medal at the Student Oscars. When I got the call from the academy to invite me to this ceremony, I couldn't believe it," she adds.