Raising a budget of around 200,000 yuan ($29,000), with part of the financing provided by her academy, Huang took around five months to produce Fatty, a 29-minute short film about how a plump girl overcomes low self-esteem about her body. It was inspired by her own experience.

Fatty won the 22-year-old, who graduated from the academy in summer, the best director award at the 21st International Student Film and Video Festival.

The event — which was held at the Beijing Film Academy between Nov 13 and 20 — screened the works of 56 college students, selected from 904 entries from 40 countries and regions. All these movies were screened in the college's two campuses, located in Haidian and Huairou districts, respectively.

With prestigious director Xie Fei, a 1993 winner of the Berlin International Film Festival's Golden Bear for Woman Sesame Oil Maker, serving as the jury president, the festival also invited nine veteran teachers from the academy to deliver in-depth analysis on artistic creation from their own majors. The ISFVF also screened an exhibition themed on modern movies from Japan and Spain.

The ISFVF awarded 10 works "the most popular short movies for an audience". Among them were two Chinese short movies, the animated work Goldfish Pot and live action drama One Night About My Mum.