honorable mention Feb 2021
narrative
OUT
Directed by Gsus Lopez
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Mary is a divorced middle-aged mother living in the English countryside. One weekend she receives the visit of her closet-emerging son Oscar.
How will Mary make sense of her son's coming out and the small-town mentality that surrounds her?
Blending high-drama theatrics with black comedy, OUT is a coming out story unlike any other you have seen before.
DUCK EGG BLUE
Directed by Margaret Kane-Rowe
Sinead needs to leave work and catch a plane. Enter Mark, her boss, drunk, emotional with a can of petrol. Followed closely by Abi and Jace, a married couple at war with each other.
DISPARUE ( GONE )
Directed by Joan Bentosela
A bickering family on a road trip stops at a gas station. Murielle, the mother, insists on having the car washed.
KUKLI
Directed by Shyama Sundar Majhi
Pukli is a village girl who belongs to an indigenous community of rural India. The lively little girl is known for her endless questions and curiosity towards anything unknown to her. But one fine day she suddenly stopped talking to everyone. No one had any clue about her silence. Her parents, villagers, and school teacher have tried a lot to find out her doubt. But they all remained speechless when they heard her foremost unanswered question.
THE HUNT
Directed by Jean-Pierre Dupuy
One day in November 1973, a father takes his eight-year-old son hunting for the first time
JOLLY ROGER
Directed by Kyle O'Donnell
After returning from Barcelona with a film he thought was about a scarecrow that followed him around, Kyle then realised he and his girlfriend had actually acted out their relationship crumbling. Jolly Roger shows a battle with masculinity, depression and some strange methods of channeling misery into forms of expression, with both fictional scenes and genuine recordings of a separation.
DAYDREAMER'S PURSUIT
Directed by Jasmine Bryan
Full of determination and uncertainty, Nutmeg pursues her daydream to escape a dull reality with a Walkman and her case of few sentimental belongings.
PRESENT, PAST...PRESENT
Directed by David Da Costa
At the Lobis, cinema and popular bar not much frequented, the evening sessions are living their last days. Claude, now in his fifties, puts all his enthusiasm to ensure the life of the place and preventing it from fading from the already gloomy urban landscape. Because in this small French town of less than 20,000 inhabitants, the cinema is one of the only places still open after 10 p.m...
ROSIE
Directed by Mark Shaba
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A little girl daydreams about a loved one in this short film dealing with the trauma of abuse and neglect
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Experimental
LAST LOVE
Directed by Dmitri Frolov
The musical and poetic composition "O my prophetic soul" on the verses of Fedor Ivanovich Tyutchev for the Reader, Pianist and String Orchestra of the composer Sergei Aleksandrovich Oskolkov served as a sound basis for the philosophical parable about the Love of the human and divine, about the cycle of life, about the decline of civilization.
AN APPARITION
Directed by Nagaraju
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The film showcases the implications and the effects of lockdown . The coronavirus pandemic has made social distancing essential in waging a victorious battle against it. Consequently, the Indian national lockdown is intrinsic to fighting it, even though there still might be people indifferent to it. The short film wants to draw attention to the same concern, and how not taking our quarantine seriously might lead to disastrous results. It chooses the metaphor of an inconsequential insect to communicate the same. by using cockroaches as projections of humans and their actions.
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DON'T TALK
Directed by Volkan Girgin
Throughout the movie, we will watch a life of a character whose face will never be seen. We will look on the world from his eyes and will witness the oppression he has experienced.
He's only two years old. His excited parents forces him to communicate by saying ‘Talk’. When he's six, he becomes chatterbox. But this time her parents are pressing him for ‘Don't talk’.
The dramatic moments that follow us throughout the film continues in the form of ‘talk or don’t talk’. Our hero can't stand this pressure any longer and he's detached from life.
ILLUMINATED
Directed by Brittany Severance
Illuminated is a short silent experimental video about the movement of engineered light at different locations through the perspective of someone with low vision. Moments include fireworks in the night sky, carnival rides, and holiday light displays based upon the artist's own visually impaired experiences.
TWO
Directed by Vasilios Papaioannu
The conversation—between sound and image, seasons come and gone, natural and altered landscapes, and an unseen man and woman—begins as a duet between a video diary and a field recording, and ends as an archive of the possibilities hibernating in each moment.
FACES WITHOUT VISAGE
Directed by Hesam Rahmani
How come a somber silence drowns me and my memory ?
How come the faces lose visage in this dark dungeon of memory ?
animation
A FLEA IN A JAR
Directed by Vicky Carr
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​Based on the fleas in a jar analogy. A female character dreams of becoming a violinist yet is always put down. The obstacles of her mind are hindering her from success.
SHADOWLAND
Directed by Bellopropello
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​The diverse communication options offered by a cell phone influence our social and consumer behavior. Excessive use changes the design of <head-down people’s> life and lifestyle habits.
BALLAD OF PIPE AND NECKLACE
Directed by Martin babic
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​In the Stone Age, young Slovenian invented the first flute, and the Croatian girl invented a first necklace in the world. The young couple soon meet and fall in love, but their tribes go into open conflict. All this brings to a great adventure.
documentary
GRANDMA ABOUT GRANDPA
Directed by Per Axel Hagne
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​Images reflecting on a solitary life in a Swedish apartment. In old age, a woman confronts her feelings towards the man she used to live with, but whom is no longer around.
AVEC
Directed by Akio Yuguchi
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​Avec is Akio Yuguchi's self-reflective film about personal grief and feelings of guilt after the death of a sibling. The pensive filmmaker aims at visualizing the long process of coming to terms with his inner conflict. The film creates a sense of ephemerality, crystallizing the spatial and temporal moments into a visual expression.
SHARP
Directed by Sander Ligthart
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​One day, 11-year-old Vince pulls a knife and threatens his classmates and teacher. Slowly the cause becomes clear: father abuses his wife severely. Social care and the police are rigorously kept out of the house by both of them. The family seems to drown further and further in a spiral of violence.
To discover the reason why, the actors of the film enter into conversation with the people behind the stories on which the script is based. This in combination with dramatic scenes mixes truth and play. They discover at first hand that nothing is what it seems.