Toyland, a new documentary about toy inventors, received the award for Best Documentary at the Naperville Independent Film Festival. The new film by Ken Sons took home top honors at the closing awards ceremony on Saturday night. This Chicagoland festival ran from September 18th – 25th and featured over 100 films from 19 states and 10 countries.

Toyland was nominated in the Documentary Feature category along with Butte, America: The Saga of a Hard Rock Mining Town; Children in Exile; China: The Rebirth of an Empire, Radical Disciple: The Story of Father Pfleger; and Mzungu (n) White-Wanderer. Tim Walsh, who appears in Toyland as a game designer, and who also acted as a Creative Consultant on the film accepted the award. "Director Ken Sons and I are thrilled to have won Best Documentary. We want to thank our fellow nominees and everyone at the Naperville Independent Film Festival," Walsh said. "Chicago is the birthplace of the toy invention business, so we were thrilled to bring our film here. Our goal with Toyland was to give the movie-going public a real appreciation for this amazing industry and the people who work in it. We are humbled and very grateful for this award."



Founded by Edmond Coisson (also Executive Director), Glessna Coisson (also Executive Director), Gary Pradel, and Daniel Nigg in 2007, the Naperville Independent Film Festival attracted nearly 5,000 film festival attendees this year.

Ken Sons also directed Knuckleball and Special O'Laughics.  Tim Walsh is a notable toy and game expert and author of Timeless Toys (2005, Andrews Mc-Meel) and WHAM-O Super-Book (2008, Chronicle Books)