'Gay Chorus Deep South' wins Tribeca audience award, as festival wraps

Watson, doc about co-founder of Greenpeace and founder of Sea Shepherd, named runner-up

The 18th annual edition of the Tribeca Film Festival has wrapped in lower Manhattan, with a final set of prizes announced.

The Audience Award for documentary went to Gay Chorus Deep South, directed by David Charles Rodrigues. The film documents a bus tour that took 300 members of the San Francisco Gay Men's Chorus to five Southern states -- Mississippi, Alabama, Tennessee, North and South Carolina -- areas of the country that have seen a resurgence of anti-LGBTQ sentiment and legislation.

“The entire reason we made this film was to bring this message of belonging of the LGBTQ community and all other communities that are considered 'the other' to as many people as possible in the world," commented Rodrigues in a statement provided by Tribeca. "The Audience Award at Tribeca is the ultimate celebration of exactly this.” 

Gay Chorus Deep South screened an additional two times on Sunday after the announcement of the Audience Award, which comes with a $10,000 prize. Below are two videos shot by Tribeca showing a performance by the chorus that followed the film's world premiere. 

The runner-up for the Audience Award for documentary was Lesley Chilcott's Watson, the story of Capt. Paul Watson, who founded Sea Shepherd and co-founded Greenpeace.

"Captain Paul Watson has spent 40 years fighting to end the destruction of the ocean’s wildlife and its habitat," Tribeca writes of the film. "Part pirate, part philosopher, Watson’s methods stop at nothing to protect what lies beneath."

Paul Watson, captain of the Sea Shepherd and co-founder of Greenpeace. Photo courtesy Tribeca Film Festival