Brian Banks Wins Audience Award For Fiction Feature Film at LAFF

Today the Los Angeles Film Festival, produced by Film Independent, announced the winners of the 2018 Los Angeles Film Festival where Brian Banks won the Audience Award for Fiction Feature Film. This award is given to the fiction feature audiences liked most as voted by a tabulated rating system. Select fiction feature-length films screening in the following sections were eligible for the Audience Award for Best Fiction Feature: U.S. Fiction, World Fiction, LA Muse, Nightfall and Premieres.

Voted for by festivalgoers, Brian Banks is an inspirational drama based on a true story about a young football player's dreams to play in the NFL are halted when he is falsely accused of rape, and erroneously sent to prison. Brian Banks follows the extraordinary journey of one man's exasperating hardship, inspiring resiliency, and, with the help of the California Innocence Project, his ultimate redemption.

Brian Banks stars Aldis Hodge (Hidden Figures, "Underground"), Greg Kinnear ("House of Cards"), Sherri Shepherd ("The View," "Trial & Error"), Melanie Liburd ("This Is Us"), Xosha Roquemore ("The Mindy Project") and Tiffany Dupont ("Star") and is directed by Tom Shadyac (Ace Venture: Pet Detective, Bruce Almighty) and written by Doug Atchinson (Akeelah and the Bee). The film is produced by Amy Baer, Shivani Rawat and Monica Levinson with Brian Banks, Justin Brooks, Neil Strum, Derrick Tseng and Tirrell D. Whittley serving as Executive Producers.


Brian Banks, an all-American football player for Long Beach Polytechnic is already committed to USC in 2002 when he is falsely accused of rape during his junior year of high school. Despite fiercely maintaining his innocence, he is railroaded through the judicial system, sentenced to a decade of prison/parole, and forced to register as a sex offender. Driven by the same determination and focus that propelled him as an athlete, Banks fights to clear his name. Ultimately, with the help of the California Innocence Project, Bank's conviction is overturned in 2012 and he is free to pursue his NFL dream.