ANDRE Wynter’s debut short film, Sweet Rind , continues to add to its already impressive list of accolades, winning three awards at the Toronto Nollywood Film Festival in Canada on Saturday.

This latest wins — Best Actor Kadeem Wilson, Best Actress Sherando Ferril, and Best First Film for Wynter, who also directed the film — bring the total number of wins for Sweet Rind to 26 from festivals across the globe.

“So many things were happening that I pulled myself away from social media for a few days. In addition, I’ve just taken up a position as teacher of theatre arts at Charlie Smith High, so I had stepped away and wasn’t really tapped in. On Sunday morning I woke up to a barrage of missed calls and was surprised that I had won because I didn’t even know I was nominated,” Wilson shared with the Jamaica Observer.

He noted that the issues raised in the short film are of such importance that it is great to see people outside Jamaica relating to and rewarding the project with a win at another festival.

“To see adjudicators be part of this journey means to me that the story resonated with them and this speaks volumes for the topics we chose to raise in the film and have it be of such a high quality that it is competitive on an international level,” said Wilson.

Ferril said she was in a meeting when she got the call she had won.

“I couldn’t contain myself and just had to share that I had just won Best Actress… luckily, it was a meeting with friends,” she said.

“I was just happy. Elated is perhaps a nice word too. I had planned to go to this event as all the other festivals have been virtual and this was the first physical event. This win is taking me into the realm of something I am very interested in as a Caribbean actress. We have won in Argentina, Brazil, the US, and now this is Nollywood and I want to connect with Nollywood. So being nominated is a huge deal. I’m off to shoot a film in St Maarten and the lead actor is Nigerian, so that connection is a big deal,” she continued.

This latest win also improves the efforts by Wynter and his team to gain financing to make Sweet Rind into a feature-length film.

“It just continues to validate what we’ve done and the work we put into this project, so we’re truly grateful. It looks good on our CV and profile as we go fund-raising. Right now we have a tentative date set to begin production of the feature, which can be dangerous as it pushes you to possibly start before you are really ready. But we have put our heart and soul into this short and we are glad to see the accolades from the nearly 60 film festivals which we have submitted to so far,” Wynter added.