After careful consideration our programming team have nominated the following 13 finalists in the 2018 international student film competition:
Guanzillum Frédérick Neegan Trudel Institut national de l’image et du son (INIS) Canada, 2017 15.00 Guanzillum is an old magician who has problems maintaining his cabaret, as well as his relationship with his son who increasingly demonstrates his interest in his father’s profession. But Guanzillum is not yet ready to pass the torch and he has one last trick in his bag. Frédérick Neegan Trudel is a director of Huron Wendat origin. After embarking on a three-year journey around the world, he worked for several years in the special effects and 3D animation industry. Curious and on the lookout for innovative ways and new challenges to tell his stories, he has enrolled in the Cinema program of INIS. |
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Corn Ömür Yıldırım Akdeniz University Turkey, 2017 7.40 Samet has been brought up by his grandparents since childhood. While he grows up and leaves his childhood behind, he is trying to gain his independence from his grandfather. Born in 1994, Ömür Yıldırım is a graduate of Akdeniz University and is one of the founding members of Antalya Cinema Society. He has worked in advertising industry as a photographer and as director of photography. He is still active in the industry. |
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Mathias Clara Stern The Film Academy Vienna Austria, 2017 30.00 Mathias is transgender. Although he is more than sure about his decision to live as a man, he still has to find his way through life in his new identity, especially in his new job. His relationship with his girlfriend also seems to have changed due to his transition. Clara Stern was born in 1987 in Vienna, Austria. She studied Directing and Screenplay Writing at the Film Academy Vienna, University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna, Austria. She was the awardee of Carl-Mayer-Screenplay-Award of the city of Graz in 2016 and 2018. She has several short-films, both documentaries and fiction. |
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The Next Stop Dominik György Film and TV School of Academy of Performing Arts in Prague Czech Republic, 2018 13.23 Family life of a loving mother and her mentally challenged son becomes a daily struggle with only one goal: survival. She would do anything for her son who lives in his own fantasy world and will never grow up, but there is not much she can do. Only role playing as a bus driver offers a short escape from their daily routine… Dominik Gygrgy is a young film director from Slovakia, where he studied film and sound at the Secondary Film School. He has been working since the age of nine. His most successful films include Death of Art, Different and Seven Deadly Sins. |
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The Dust Doesn’t Want to Come Out of the Esqueleto Daniel Santiso & Max William Morais Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, State University of Rio de Janeiro Brazil, 2018 20.00 Four inhabitants of the state of Rio de Janeiro are part of the removals that are happening now in the Metrô-Mangueira community, telling us stories. These narratives arise from the encounter with the images of the removal of the Esqueleto community in that same place five decades earlier. Daniel Santiso (1993) is Brazilian living in Rio de Janeiro. He is a student of Cinema and TV at the School of Communication of Federal University of Rio de Janeiro. He works with editing, photography, screenplay and production. With Lorran Dias and Max William Morais, he was curator of the Semana Cinerama (Cinerama Week), an independent festival of video-art and experimental film in Rio de Janeiro. Max Morais (1993) is a Brazilian living in Rio de Janeiro. She holds a degree in Visual Arts at the State University of Rio de Janeiro, works with costumes, artistic direction and executive production, also producing the seminar Entre a natureza e o artíficio (Between Nature and Artifice). |
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Delay Osman Çakır Erciyes University Turkey, 2018 12.00 A train is late to arrive in a provincial station. Every passenger waiting for the train will have different reactions to this delay. Born in 1995, and a student of Erciyes University, Çakır is also the director of Korkuluk. He has won various awards for his films and is now working in the official television station of Erciyes University, Kampüs TV. |
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Find Fix Finish Sylvain Cruiziat & Mila Zhlutenko University of Television and Film Munich Germany, 2017 19.25 Find Fix Finish delves into the accounts of three military drone pilots as they tell the intimate story of the lives they observe on a day-to-day basis. The voyeuristic ocular perspective from a military drone can reduce people to pixels on a screen and a certain decontextualisation is almost necessary to deal with the fact that people can be killed on a push of a button. “Have you ever stepped on an anthill and not given it a second thought?”. Sylvain Cruiziat is a Franco-German filmmaker, born in July of 1995. Since his enrolment in HFF Munchen in 2014, Sylvain has directed several short films including his latest short documentary film: Find Fix Finish. Mila Zhluktenko, born in February of 1991 in Kiew, is a Ukrainian-German filmmaker. Since her enrolment in HFF Munchen, in 2014, Mila has directed several short films including her latest short documentary film Find Fix Finish. |
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Flower Found Jorn Leeuwerink HKU University of Arts Utrecht Netherlands, 2017 6.46 A beautiful red flower stands in the middle of the forest. When it suddenly disappears, Mouse is very sad. Bird takes Mouse around the forest to search for the flower and other animals join in the search too. When they think they’ve found the flower, things quickly start to get out of hand. Jorn Leeuwerink was born on July 19, 1990 in the Netherlands. He studied 2D animation at the HKU University of the Arts Utrecht. |
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A Short Film About Sadness Ming-Wei Chiang Lodz Film School Poland, 2018 15.22 One night, two film school students meet a prostitute. Once they put a camera on her and start interviewing, one of the young film-makers gradually realizes that she is not the person they assumed she would be like. This unexpected encounter brings him to a moral choice that he has to make. Graduated from the YZU department of Art and Design in Taiwan, Ming-Wei Chiang worked as propsman and set decorator in Tsai Ming-Liang’s Stray Dogs (2013). He directed Frog (2013) and was awarded Jury Special Mentions in Chinese Visual Festival held in King’s College, London. He is currently studying at Lodz Film School. |
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Non-Rainy Philosophy Fran Gondi EMCA France, 2017 6.45 A being walks with his umbrella under a hard rainy night. Lampposts will guide him in the dark. After two years of studying Illustration and Graphism in Spain, Fran Gondi studied in EMCA School in France for four years. While he was there he made several films and a graduation film focusing on puppets and pixelation technics. Currently he works in France as a stop motion animator. |
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Shoehorn Kasım Ördek İstanbul Yeni Yüzyıl University Turkey, 2018 20.00 Ekrem, 32 years old, finished his prison sentence recently. Now he collects waste materials and sells them to feed his family. One day he comes upon an item and he realises that it belongs to his wife. Ekrem starts to suspect that his wife is cheating on him, doing things behind his back. Born in 1992 in Diyarbakır, Kasım Ördek immigrated to Istanbul with his family in 1995. He graduated from the Radio, Television and Cinema department of Yeni Yüzyıl University. Kerata (2018) is his first short film. |
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A Dialogue With Cyberspace Brian den Hartog RITCS School of Arts Brussel Belgium, 2017 14.00 In our everyday face-to-face interaction, we express ourselves with our bodies. It gives us the ability to physically be with each other. Since a few decades, an increasing part of our interaction takes place via new technologies, with the result that we’ve created a digital version of ourselves that we can shape however we want it to be. By trying to replace our physical way of being by online interaction, we started an ambiguous quest that confuses us. This confusion, of our physical self opposite to it’s virtual replica, forms the foundation of this film. Brian den HARTOG (1989, the Netherlands) studied in theatre school before he went to Brussels to start his BA in Documentary Filmmaking at RITCS. In 2017, he graduated with high distinction with the film A Dialogue with Cyberspace, world premiere at IFFR 2018. Den Hartog researches the conception of self in a more and more technological society. |
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Blue Sky, Clean Earth Mahyar Mandegar Tehran University of Art Iran, 2017 11.00 “My name is Massoud and this is a holding cell. I am a thief. That’s why they always bring me here. Mahyar Mandegar was born 1996 in Tehran, Iran. He started his career in the Faculty of Cinema & Theater at the Art University of Tehran. After two years he focused on editing and participated as editor in short films such as Barcelona (2017), Nausea (2018), Stairways (2018), Metamorphosis (2018). His first short film Blue Sky, Clean Earth (2017) won the Best Film Under 15 Minutes and Best Cinematography from Image of the Year Film Festival (Iran). It also won Best Original Score from Nahal Short Film Festival (Iran). |
Selection of Out of Competition films:
Las del Diente Ana Pérez López California Institute of the Arts Spain/USA, 2018 5.28 Girls are weird. Babies are weird. Bodies are extra weird. Las del Diente is a film about now, a time when women are tired of being forced to choose between having kids and their careers. “Anomalous” days of the reproductive system should be celebrated instead of stigmatized. Ana Pérez López is a Spanish animator and journalist based in Los Angeles, California. Her first film has been featured in Motionographer and screened at festivals such as Dok Leipzig, MIAF, 3D wire and ANIMASIVO. |
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No Gravity Charline Parisot, Jérémy Cissé, Fioretta Caterina Cosmidis, Flore Allier-Estrada, Maud Lemaître-Blanchart, Ludovic Abraham Supinfocom Rubika France, 2018 7.56 An astronaut comes back to earth and tries to fit in to his home planet again. Charline Parisot, Jérémy Cissé, Fioretta Caterina Cosmidis, Flore Allier-Estrada, Maud Lemaître- |
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Lalo’s House Kelley Kali University of Southern California USA, 2018 25.00 After being taken from their home in Jacmel, Haiti, two young sisters must escape a child sex trafficking ring, disguised as a Catholic orphanage. Inspired by true events. Kelley Kali is a Beninese/American filmmaker. She received her MFA from the University of Southern California’s School of Cinematic Arts. Her more recent work Lalo’s House, filmed on location in Haiti, won the Programmers’ Award at the 2018 Pan African Film Festival. |
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Embodying Voice Ala Nunu Leszynska Royal College of Art London UK, 2017 0.45 A short lipsync inspired by a piece of recording found in the British Library archives. Ala Nunu Leszynska – London based polish animator, currently studying MA in animation at Royal College of Art. |
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Facing It Sam Gainsborough National Film & TV School UK, 2018 7.32 As Sean waits anxiously in the local pub, he is forced to explore his own unhappy memories and relationships in an evening that will leave him changed forever. Sam Gainsborough is an animation director who has combined live-action filming with stop-motion plasticine animation to create his own unique animation medium. Prior to the NFTS, he obtained a BA in screenwriting from the Arts University Bournemouth, and directed multiple animated short films and music videos. |
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300g/m2 Kamila Kucikova Estonian Academy of Arts Estonia, 2018 5.33 It’s a monodrama of a white-white paper. Born in Slovakia, he worked for the festival Fest Anča. Now living in Estonia, he is working for PÖFF Shorts. |