The winners of the 12th Annual Easterseals Disability Film Challenge Awards were announced Thursday night at the Sony Pictures Studios lot in Culver City.

Designed to promote and encourage more film and television works by artists with disabilities, this year’s Easterseals challenge tasked filmmakers with creating short films one-to-five minutes in length that exist within the thriller and suspense genres. As usual, challenge participants had just five days to craft their shorts. The cast and crew of each film had to consist of volunteers, and at least one person with a physical or cognitive disability was encouraged to be involved in the making of each short in an on-camera or behind-the-scenes capacity.

Of the 123 shorts that were submitted this year, just five ultimately took home the challenge’s top awards. In addition to host, actor and Easterseals founder Nic Novicki, Thursday night’s event was attended by Peter Farrelly...