SDUPS has announced that Leandro Blanco has won the 40th Annual Film Festival with his film, “Voices We Shall Never Hear,” a powerful, emotional collage of underwater imagery—both concrete and abstract—interspersed with disturbing images of humans and their effect on the marine ecosystem (and each other). I was in the audience, and the short film was made even more powerful by its display on the enormous screen in the auditorium. I suspect that Leo’s film won by a landslide.

We’ve embedded the film in this entry, but you can also see it as a DiveFilm HD podcast [direct].

Michele Hall plays MC for the evening, introducing each of the 10 finalists

Matt Segal and SDUPS’ Allison Vitsky both took a bunch of photos of the evening’s event. When they have enough time to post them somewhere, we’ll link to them from here.

UPDATE: Allison Vitsky has posted photos from the evening’s event.