Audience Choice Award Winner 2025
Congratulations to our audience choice award winner!
Reel Sisters and the Brooklyn Academy of Music are proud to announce Jellyfish And Lobster as the winner of our Women’s History Month Audience Choice Award 2025. Congratulations to director and writer Yasmin Afifi and producer Elizabeth Rufai! Thanks to our audience for voting and selecting our “Oscar” audience winner. Jellyfish And Lobster is the winner of the BAFTA Award. Jellyfish and Lobster was recently screened at BAM with Blaque, Reunion, Ro and the Stardust, Ya Hanouni and A Trip With Mom. The shorts were top Oscar qualifying and award-winning films from Reel Sisters.
Jellyfish And lobster
Cast and crew of Jellyfish and Lobster at the BAFTA Awards. Photo: Reuters.
Jellyfish And Lobster, 20 min., narrative
A magical realist, dark comedy/drama set within the backdrop of a gritty British care home. Two old and terminally ill patients discover a magical pool that restores them back to their younger selves beneath the water.
For more information visit Jellyfish and Lobster.
PRODUCER
Elizabeth Rufai is a BAFTA-winning producer and co-founder of Carbon Pictures. With a background spanning film distribution, commercials, and shorts, Elizabeth is also a graduate of the National Film and Television School’s Producing MA where she produced the 2024 BAFTA-winning short Jellyfish and Lobster. In 2024, she was selected as one of Screen International’s Screen Stars of Tomorrow alongside Carbon Pictures co-founder Abiola Rufai-Awojide.
Influenced by her British-Nigerian heritage and upbringing in the dynamic cities of London and Lagos, she is drawn to bold and distinctive interpretations of cultural identity, hidden pasts and speculative futures. Elizabeth is currently developing a dynamic slate of bold cross-cultural stories for film and TV.
DIRECTOR/WRITER
Yasmin Afifi is a BAFTA-winning Egyptian-British writer/director whose short film Jellyfish and Lobster won the Best British Short Film Award at the 2024 BAFTAs.
She is a graduate of the prestigious Directing Fiction MA at the UK’s National Film and Television School, having been awarded a full scholarship from BBC Film. Her films have garnered multiple awards and screened at an array of BAFTA and Oscar Qualifying festivals globally including LFF, Aesthetica, Leeds, Hollyshorts, Palm Springs, Encounters, NYFF and many more. She loves using the medium of comedy, magical realism or absurdism to explore taboo and dark subject matters. Often inserting grounded characters into more conceptual worlds to explore stories with heart and relevance to the world. She is currently developing her debut feature.
Elizabeth Rufai, Jellyfish and Lobster producer, at the BAFTA Awards celebration. Photo: Getty Images
Congratulations! It is not often one gets to experience a film, writing, actors, and direction that is perfection, lovely and deeply moving from start to finish. This film is excellence at its best and so deserving of recognition. Bravo, well done!
Thanks so much Lorraine for such lovely feedback, we are so honoured! Thank you for watching! x
What a beautiful film! It brought tears to my eyes. Excellent acting and directing, it flowed like a documentary – – all of the actors seemed too real to be acting.
Thank you Nadine! We’re super grateful to see how it has resonated, thanks so much for your kind words!