The 12th Shanghai International Film Festival Student Shorts Award was announced on 21 June 2009 in Shanghai Wanda International Camera. British Council Film Department selected 10 shorts for this competition, two of which were stand out from over 600 works and selected for the final round competition. Hyebin Lee’s Cherry On the Cake received Best Animation and Sally Pearce’s Elephants received Best Creative Idea from final five awards competition.  

International Student Shorts Award was introduced since the 9th SIFF in 2006, as a stage for the young people to communicate with renowned film masters and to display their works. This year total 655 works were submitted from over 45 counties and regions, displaying various stories that happened in the cities around the world. After hotly competition, the jury team selected 20 shorts for the final round competition. The competition categories are Best Film, Best Director, Best Creative Idea, Best Animation and Special Jury Award. This year’s Best Film is A Day’s Work from Rajeev Dassani (U.S.A); Best Director is Laimir Fano Villaescusa, the director of Ode to the Pineapple (Cuba); Special Jury Award was given to Xi Xueqing’s Secret Tunnel (China).

Below is the intro about these two UK shorts:

Cherry On the Cake (UK) – Best Animation

Director: Hyebin Lee
National Film and TelevisionSchool
Synopsis: It's Cherry's birthday and she's excited about spending it with her family, but they're all too caught up in their own worlds to realise.  The smaller Cherry feels, the smaller she gets - will she disappear altogether?  A little bit of attention goes a long way when you're only 2 centimetres tall.

Elephants (UK) – Best Creative Idea

Director: Sally Pearce
National Film and Television School
Synopsis: Kay Grey is a young girl growing up in an entirely grey house in a totally grey world with very very grey parents.  But then her house gets infested with Elephants.  They can’t be seen against the grey walls, and crash around in the middle of the night, and leave massive piles of dung in the loo.  Kay's unloving parents make her paint the house with brilliant colours, so that they can see these pests.  But when Kay corners the Elephants, they become friends and she decides to help them...