Carolyn Michel wins Best Actress of the Year at Oniros Film Awards in Italy

It was a chilly August night in Aosta, Italy, when Carolyn Michel was getting ready for the Oniros Film Awards. 

She had a pair of glamorous high heels in her hand when her husband, Howard Millman, reminded her of the uneven cobblestones streets awaiting them outside.

A few hours later, Michel was shocked to find herself walking onstage to accept the award for Best Actress of the Year — in her most sensible pair of heels.

“I would never have worn those comfortable heels if I knew I was going to win!” Michel says with a laugh. “I didn’t even have a speech planned. I just sort of ran up there and talked and tried not to ramble.”

Michel won an Oniros Film Award for her role as Tanya, a hard-drinking, chain-smoking Russian Cossack stunt rider in a small 1970s European-style circus in the film “Katia.”

The story follows three female circus performers who share a best friend named — you guessed it — Katia. When the women discover a painful secret their pal has been hiding from them, the unlikely trio are bonded in their pain and determination to do something about it.

The 23-minute short film was directed and produced by resident Naida Joanides and filmed entirely in Sarasota — keep that in mind if you watch and notice there’s a whole scene in which the woman are digging a hole in the snow.

“It looks like it was freezing,” Michel says. “Luckily we had one really cold night so we weren’t sweating — we were cold enough that we were comfortable out there in all the warm clothes … and there was someone off on the side throwing ‘snow’ on us.”

The film’s short-run length was one reason Michel thought she had no chance of winning. She was competing in the same category as actors in full-length feature films because of the broad nature of the award.

The Oniros Film Awards is a monthly and annual IMDb qualifying competition based in Aosta that celebrates films in a variety of genres from various countries. Michel had won Best Actress of the Month in May, which made her eligible for the yearly award. But even when she made the final six, she never considered the possibility of winning.

“Never in a million years did I think I would win,” Michel says. “We went because it seemed like a good excuse to get off the sofa and go to Italy.”

When her name was flashed across the screen, she swore. She couldn’t help it.

Her husband, on the other hand, was furiously texting away to share the good news with all their friends and family back in the U.S.

“It was adorable,” she says.

The awards double as a film festival, which gave Michel the chance to see “Katia” for the third time. The first time was at the 2018 Sarasota Film Festival — appropriately in a town with a strong circus heritage.

(Speaking of Sarasota, Ringling College of Art and Design graduate Aviv Mano also took home the 2018 Best Animation Award at the Oniros Film Awards for the short “Game Changer.”)

Joanides traveled with her mother to perform in a European circus growing up, which Michel says gave her the extensive background knowledge she needed to create a film that dives so deeply into circus culture.

But you don’t have to like the circus to appreciate this film about friendship and strong women, Michel says. She’s thankful to have worked with a talented team of filmmakers to get these themes across, and interacting with fellow artists at the awards made her even more grateful to have been chosen for the role.

Michel has performed on Broadway with Sid Caesar, performed 24 seasons with the Asolo Repertory Theatre, and done five one-person plays at Florida Studio Theatre.

“It was thrilling to me to be around all these creative people from around the world who had come together at this charming town at the foot of the Alps to share their creativity,” she says.