Nick Waterman’s The Flame has lit up the 30th annual Flickerfest in Sydney, awarded Best Australian Short Film at the festival’s awards ceremony on Sunday.

Other winners included Tilda Cobham-Hervey and Dev Patel’s Roborovski, which was crowned Best Australian Short Animation, and Naomi Fryer, who won Best Direction in an Australian Short Film for her work on River.

The Flame, which was directed in collaboration with Dayannah Baker Barlow, Tyrese Fernando and Lance Whitton Jr, is about a young boy and girl in a remote town who remember a time before a cold wind first swept across the land; when fire meant something different.

The film was written by Nick Waterman, Megan Washington, Dayannah Baker Barlow, Tyrese Fernando, Paul Spearim, Connie Taylor, and Lance Whitton Jr, and produced by Beyond Empathy.

It was one of four Australian films to be selected for last year’s Berlin International Film Festival.