An award-winning nonprofit filmmaking center for the youth, Light House Studio in central Virginia, has announced that the short science fiction thriller Loop is the winner of the Bronze World Medal for the Best Student Film at 2017 New York Festival's World's Best TV & Films competition. Winners were announced on Tuesday at the annual National Association of Broadcasters’ Show in the Las Vegas. The New York film festival honors programming in all lengths and also forms submitted from over 50 countries.

Loop was created by the young Virginia filmmakers Ryan Beard, Stephen Gentry and Eli Hall in the Light House Studio’s two-week Narrative workshop in the summer of 2016. The film explores a near-future when the virtual reality machines have been banned, spawning a dangerous and also alluring black market. Before winning the Bronze World Medal, Loop won the first place in Virginia Film Festival’s ACTION! High School Director’s Competition. The film was screened for a sold-out crowd at the Charlottesville’s historic Paramount Theater just before the film festival’s closing film, La La Land.

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Since its creation in the year 2016, Loop has been a finalist at the Kids First Film Festival in New Mexico, the William and Mary Global Film Festival in Virginia, the Newport Beach Film Festival in California and also was the winner of the Gabriel Spirit Award at the Sun Valley Film Festival’s Future Filmmakers Forum in Idaho.

“A core part of Light House’s mission is to show our students’ work. We are thrilled for our students to win such a prestigious award, and for filmmakers and industry executives from around the globe to see their film,” said Deanna Gould, Light House Studio’s Executive Director.

Each year the Light House teaches a variety of filmmaking workshops for more than 1,000 students from 70 schools in the central Virginia and beyond.

Mrudula Duddempudi.