2nd Season

LITTLE THINGS MEAN A LOT

Michael Monteith

Best Screenplay

The truly unique story of “pretty” Kitty Kallen, including her rise from humble origins to most popular U.S. singer, is revealed in flashback amid news of her untimely death.

WE CAN DREAM

Dae Ryun Chang

Best Student Documentary

Jihoon is a veteran disabled baker who works at We Can Cookies, a company that specializes in organic baked products and is run by nuns. He feels rewarded that consumers like what he and his fellow disabled workers make. He aspires to be a role model to his junior bakers and hopes that the company can hire more disabled workers to share in his dream.

ARCHI PAPER

Rafal Barnas

Best Animation

ArchiPaper is a non-commercial, experimental, short animation that tells a story about architecture in an unconventional way. Physical model of a house has been transformed into an image that teems with life, creating a leisurely-paced, surrealist story immersed in an world built solely out of paper elements.

STuK

Nadira Murray

Best Experimental

Troubled teen Angela enters the toilet to refresh herself. She feels odd. She hears a sudden gunshot and screams – “the night club is under attack”. Angela fears for her life; or is her mind playing tricks?

YOU

Timon Birkhofer

Best Music Video

Two struggling fighters – a master and his student.
A story of persistence, commitment, following your dream, and never giving up. Ever.

IN ORBIT

Katie McNeice

Best LGBTQ+

There was once an invisible optician, trapped in a strange and lonely world. Her story starts with a broken lens and the woman who taught her to see things differently.

THE BEAUTY

Pascal Schelbli

Best Student Film

What if plastic could be integrated into sea life? Take a deep breath and dive into a world, where feelings of guilt dissolve amongst the mysterious depths of the ocean. A world where we encounter bizarre creatures and discover eerily beautiful landscapes. Unfortunately, our air doesn’t last forever and we have to realize that nature alone can’t solve this issue.

MY DAD IS ORANGE

Elle Ralph

Best Student Documentary

A short poetic and experimental documentary exploring synaesthesia, a neuro-cognitive phenomenon where one or more senses are blended together. ‘My Dad Is Orange’ will take you on a multi-sensory journey where you can explore a world where it is possible to smell sounds or even taste colours.

Façade – Adrift in a sea of strangers

Alexandre Richard

Best Director

The search for oneself in a deluded world of ignorance and insecurity.

OKAVANGO

Dereck Joubert + Beverly Joubert

Best Cinematography

This is an insiders’ view of one of the greatest river systems on the planet. It is presented as a love letter, and explores the layers of paradise, limbo and inferno in a natural history echo of Dante’s Divine Comedy, a quest to find the real Okavango, a river of dreams, or beauty of conflict and turmoil.

It has real wildlife drama with a lioness who overcomes the greatest challenge of life, and warthogs who bunk up with hyenas. Elephants gently take us on their journey and hippos clash in the water, that water that is made up of trillions of droplets joining, flowing, raging and winding on down 500 miles or more of open pristine landscape. And what we discover is that, this river is a reflection of us, she is humbling and hostile, a jewel and a rough storm, a nightmare for some, a dream for all of us, animal and human alike.

BIG BREAK

Dicle Ozcer

Best Student Director

So you want to become an actress in LA? How original.
Deena, a young actress, thought it was finally her time to shine when she got a part in a movie with Clooney. But in this industry, people’s mind change, projects get dropped, a butt double steals your spotlight and all you’re left with is a small clip for your reel and some gas reimbursement. When Deena realizes her scene was removed due to some ‘controversy’, she takes some drastic measures to make her big break happen.

CIRCUS SAM

Rayner Wang

Best Producer

Set in an American coastal town, Alice Featherston is having a hard time asking her crush, Dave, to be her high school prom date. That changes, however, when she meets a traveling circus clown, Sam. The two strike up a unique rapport.
Alice discovers that Sam is mute and can only communicate through writing poetry. He also possesses the unique ability to create illustrations that come to life. With his help and guidance, Alice gains the courage to speak to Dave at school. Even when things don’t go quite according to plan, Sam helps navigate Alice through her disappointments.
A coming-of-age story about a young girl finding her confidence, made only possible by the friendship with a magical, mystical but kind-hearted stranger.

ADAMS

Tom Stern

Best Comedy

Based on a short story by Man Booker Prize winning author George Saunders, Adams is a very dark comedy starring Patton Oswalt and Fred Armisen. Oswalt plays Roger, a regular guy who’s always been suspicious of Adams (Armisen), his pretentious next door neighbor. One day Roger comes home to find Adams standing in his kitchen in his underwear. The allegorical conflict that ensues explores themes like fear of the other and anti-intellectualism that are very much of the moment in America today.

BEYOND HOME

David Sipoš

Best Foreign Film

BEYOND HOME is the story of Tine and Manca, brother and sister, abandoned by their father to a vitiated family in the countryside. As their situation grows unbearable, Tine plans to leave his sister behind and cross the ocean in search of their father.

SEED OF HOPE

Claude KONGS

Best Short Film

In the near future, on board a space mission representing humanity’s last stand, astronaut Lieutenant Schweiger discovers the terrible reason behind his unexpected awakening from cryosleep. He is forced to take decisions with serious consequences. Will he be a hero as the survival of the crew, the cargo and maybe the whole of mankind are at stake?

BETWEEN PAIN AND AMEN

Toma Enache

Best Drama

A young composer and double bass virtuoso, who returns to Romania after studying in Vienna, is arrested by the political police soon after getting engaged and taken to the Pitesti prison, where a brainwashing and torture-based experiment is under way. The horrible communist experiment, copied after the Soviet model, is headed by the much-feared Ciumau. The composer survives unimaginable torture due to his strong religious belief and composes Ode to God. His music will eventually save his fiancee, Lia.
The film is independent and inspired by true events.

AIÒ ZITELLI

Jean-Marie Antonini

Best Short Film

In the midst of the trench warfare, the Corsican soldier Lucien Casalta is called urgently at the back of the lines by a court of the country as a translator. Upon his arrival, he is surprised to see that the young soldier tried for desertion is none other than his compatriot and friend, Joseph…