MANSFIELD — A Galion businessman plays a role in a short film produced by 419 Productions out of Mansfield that recently took home athe top prize in at Synerfest, a Columbus film festival.

Jim Hedges plays a waiter in the film “Karma at Sunset 2.” It’s comedic role in an otherwise somewhat dark movie.

“We had a blast doing this movie,” Hedges said. “It was about 12 a.m. when we shot the scene at a downtown Mansfield restaurant.”

David Kirst and Gary Cassady opened 419 Productions last year.

“I knew David, we worked together on some other shows and he just called me up and asked me if I’d be interested in being in it. I said ‘sure,’” Hedges said. “I played a waiter who served food to an obnoxious gangster. It was fun.”

Hedges said he plans to work with Kirst and 419 Productions in the future, pointing out Kirst does the cinematography for a Youtube channel called “Jim’s Rare Barn Finds.”

As far as “Karma at Sunset 2,” Kirst said Hedges played in a scene where the main character hollers at him for a scotch. When Hedges goes to get the drink for the man, he actually gargles a bit of the scotch and then spits it back into the man’s drink before serving it to him.

Kirst 419 Productions is still reeling from their accomplishments at Synerfest.

“I was on Facebook and kind of surfing and came upon a post about Synerfest down in Columbus,” Kirst said. “They were accepting films for this film festival that were 20 minutes or less and it had to be all original.

“I had been working with a lot of local people here and they all wanted to be in this movie,” Kirst said. “So we filmed it right here in Mansfield. I wrote the script with Donald Beverly, who is also one of the actors in the movie. We filmed it in two nights and I edited it in three days. All the music is 100 percent original. I produced all the music except for one song.

“We went against 12 different movies and we got the most popular vote … and that was by a landslide and then we went on to win best movie overall,” he said. “That was voted on by six judges and for the first time in the festival history, all six judges voted for the same movie and it was our movie.

Kirst said the move is about a woman and her husband, an older, affluent gentleman who has his “goons” hanging around a lot. The husband is very controlling, and a jerk who makes arrangements to have his wife killed to collect on an insurance policy.

“He sends his goons out there and they shoot her and at the same time a homeless man witnesses it and they have to chase him down. As they are beating up the homeless man they never did finish off the girl. They only shot her in the shoulder,” the Mansfield filmmaker explained.

He said while the goons are beating up the homeless man, the gun drops and the woman picks up the gun and shoots one of the goons and then screams at the others asking who sent them.

“At the last minute, the guy says her husband sent them and she ends up shooting him,” Kirst explained.

The woman than goes back to her home and the husband arrives home surprised to see her.

“She acts like nothing is going on and she’s smiling and cooking him dinner and he sits down and the wife gives him a poisoned drink. All of a sudden freezes up and he’s paralyzed,” Kirst said. “And then she tells him she knows what happened. In the end, she shoots him and takes him out.”

Kirst said 419 Productions contacted Mansfield Playhouse and are hoping to screen the movie in Mansfield so those who were in the movie and their families can watch it.

“And after that night, I’d release it on Facebook and Youtube and other social media platforms and people can contact us if they want a copy,” he said.

“I was happy for (Kirst winning the film festival awards),” he said. “That’s a big feather in somebody’s cap to win two major film festival awards at the same thing.”

“I’m still in shock by it all,” Kirst said of the festival awards. “I’m really humbled. The people who were in the movie? They never acted before and they took their chance with me and made me look the best I could. We accomplished something we never dreamed we would right away.”