My Cam short film competition announced its winners last week at the launch of this year’s Watersprite International Student Film Festival.

The competition’s “Show us your Cambridge” headline enticed participants to address a distinctive aspect of University life and was judged by two industry experts and Cambridge alumnus, award-winning documentary film maker, Brian Woods, and director and screenwriter, Chris Weitz (About a Boy and Twilight: New Moon).

Both unanimously awarded first place to local resident Dominic Halford, whose short film “Cambridge and the College Hallows” integrated familiar Cambridge details in a spoof trailer for a Harry Potter sequel.

Weitz commented on the film’s “terrific ability to push great effects out of the current technology without going overboard,” while Woods added that “David Yates should be looking over his shoulder!”

The film’s Harry Potter homage fell particularly well with Watersprite’s announcement that this year’s closing speaker will be David Yates himself.

Finding our about the competition just four weeks before the deadline, Halford found filming as a process as surreal as the result: “We will probably never know whether the bemused expressions from various university staff were a result of seeing eight people in undergraduate, masters and doctoral robes being chased through a car-park or just that that kind of thing usually occurs slightly later in the term - It certainly caused a few engines to stall!”

The other two winning films were Jeremy Evans’ ‘Study/break,’ shot on a pocket-size handheld camera and depicting the frustration and relief of a passing deadline, and Paula Brown’s, Zheko Georgieu’s, and Mary Beth Kinsey’s ‘Newnham College student life,’ which shows snippets of the daily life at the College.

The winners will receive a cash prize and a lunch at BAFTA with former Chair and television producer Hilary Bevan-Jones, who is also the Patron of Watersprite. As the next big celebration of student film, Watersprite will take place between 24 – 26 February 2012.