Archive for category: 2019

A special cake to celebrate the 20 years of ShorTS!

It’s ShorTS 20th birthday! They key to any good birthday party is friends, fun and food, therefore cake is the running theme of this year’s poster art. Originally, to take the cake meant to win a prize or a competition — people as far back as the ancient Greeks used the word cake to mean “a symbolic prize.” It’s essentially an idiomatic way of saying that something has won top marks or is the best in its field, and here at ShorTS we strive every year to organise the best festival we possibly can – one that really ‘takes the cake’!

The 20th edition of ShorTS International Film Festival will feature 20 Italian works chosen from countless shorts; culminating in the selection of 82 works from 30 different countries. They will feature in the historic Maremetraggio section of ShorTS IFF, scheduled from June 28th until July 6th in Trieste.

In this section, the best short films from all over the world will compete. In 2018, these shorts were granted awards from major international film festivals, such as the Palme d’Or at Cannes (All These Creatures) and the Oscar (The Silent Child).

Behind the camera in our 2019 edition there will be many Italian directors, who sign as many as 20 works amongst the selected shorts; taking on a diverse range of genres, from comedy to animation, up to the most innovative and experimental of shorts.

Amongst the competing Italian works, we have Pepitas by Alessandro Samapoli and Renata Ciaravino, starring Lino Guanciale, star of the well-loved fiction La porta rossa and Ariella Reggio, acclaimed Triestine actress, who plays the roles of granddaughter and grandmother.

We have dedicated a large space to animation, which will include the work Mercurio by Michele Bernardi, one of the most important Italian animators and cartoonists; author of important collaborations in the world of television, music and advertising.

The short Sugarlove by Laura Lucchetti uses the technique of stop-motion to tell the story of Gemma and Marcello, a couple struggling with wedding preparations. We also have Goodbye Marilyn by Maria di Razza, set in Venice in the Giornate degli Autori section, which depicts an extraordinary animated version of an interview with the iconic Marilyn Monroe.

We present many storylines that focus on the very young, who are often struggling with a world that does not accept nor understand them. This is seen in the short Quelle brutte cose by Loris Giuseppe Nese, presented in competition at the International Critics’ Week 2018. We also see this in F**ck Different by David Barbieri, which follows the struggles of Luca, a bourgeoisie boy, during a dull night at the disco. Director Paolo Strippoli on the other hand, opts for allegorical language in his short Nessun Dorma, in which inside a church, two young scout refugees are the only ones still awake in a sleeping world.

Competing we also have Milky Way by Valerio Rufo with Daphne Scoccia; acclaimed protagonist of ‘Fiore’ by Claudio Giovannesi, which was awarded the Premio Prospettiva at ShorTS IFF 2017.

Furthermore, topical subjects such as those dealt with in My Tyson by Claudio Casale make an appearance; telling the story of Alaoma Tyson, a young Italian boxing champion born to Nigerian parents in Rome. We also have the highly experimental and innovative short L’ombra della sposa by Alessandre Pescetta, which imagines the last moments of soldiers in the depths of the Mediterranean during the Second World War.

The 82 works will compete for the esteemed EstEnergy – Hera Group Prize of 5,000 Euros awarded by an international panel of judges; composed of Hrönn Marinósdóttir (director of the Reykjavik International Film Festival), Heinz Hermanns (director of Interfilm Berlin Short Film Festival), Alvaro Gago Diaz (Winner of Best Short Film Award in the last edition of ShorTS IFF) and Pippo Mezzapesa (director and author).

This year, we once again confirm the TriesteCaffè prize and the Oltre il muro award, given to the best Italian short by a panel of prisoners at the Trieste Penitentiary at the end of a 400-hour training course created by the Maremetraggio Association on behalf of EnAIP FVG.

“The presence of so many Italian films in the competition is certainly an important sign” – declares Francesco Ruzzier, curator of the Maremetraggio section – “because it serves as a testimony to the ever-growing movement with increasingly refined and acute awareness. As always, the film selection never begins with the themes approached or the political discourses addressed within, but from the attempt to identify an idea of personal cinema at the base of films; from this idea it’s impossible for a certain world vision to not emerge. In a period of crisis and transition like this, from both a human and environmental standpoint, certain issues are undertaken even by those who do not do so directly. What emerges most from the selection of the shorts is the condition of disorientation which human beings are experiencing; facing changes greater than themselves. There is a continuous attempt to decipher an increasingly chaotic and at times inscrutable reality, hence the desire to continually take refuge in human relationships, in the search for others, in understanding.”

DOWNLOAD THE MAREMETRAGGIO 2019 SECTION LIST

27 floors (to live and invest) – Chile – Álvaro Rivera
A Place Called Home – Austria – Isabella Brunäcker
Acide – France – Just Philippot
All Inclusive – Switzerland – Corina Schwingruber Ilić
All these creatures – Australia – Charles Williams
Aquarium – Italy – Lorenzo Puntoni
Aurore – France – Mael Le Mée
Bautismo – Italy – Mauro Vecchi
Bless You! – Poland – Paulina Ziolkowska
Bug – France – Cedric Prevost
Butterfly – Italy – Gianluca Mangiasciutti
Circuit – Switzerland – Delia Hess
Colaholic – Poland – Marcin Podolec
Comments – Germany – Jannis Alexander Kiefer
Così in Terra – Italy Pier – Lorenzo Pisano
Cyclists – Croatia – Veljko Popovic
Deer Boy – Poland – Katarzyna Gondek
Déguste – France – Stéphane Baz
Delay – Iran – Ali Asgari
Don’t Feed These Animals – Portugal – Guilherme Afonso, Miguel Madaíl de Freitas
Doors of Perception – Germany – Caroline Schwarz
Entropia – Hungary – Flóra Anna Buda
Everything calms down – Argentina – Virginia Scaro
F**k Different – Italy – David Barbieri
Fauve – Canada – Jeremy Comte
Fifteen – Peru – Peiman Zekavat
Fino alla fine – Italy – Giovanni Dota
Fire Mouth – Brazil – Luciano Pérez Fernández
Five Minutes to Sea – Russian Federation – Natalia Mirzoyan
Floating – Spain – Frankie De Leonardis
Follower – Germany – Jonathan Benedict Behr
Freddo dentro – Italy – Valerio Burli
Gagarin, I will miss you – Italy – Domenico De Orsi
Gli arcidiavoli – Italy – Lorenzo Pullega
Goodbye Marilyn – Italy – Maria Di Razza
How Steel Was Tempered – Croatia – Igor Grubic
Inanimate – United Kingdom – Lucia Bulgheroni
Isle of Capri – Sweden – Måns Berthas
Kampung Tapir – Malaysia – See Wee Aw
La Faim Va Tout Droit (Hunger Keeps Walking) – Italy – Giulia Canella
Lobster Dinner – Italy – Gregorio Franchetti
Lunar-Orbit Rendezvous – Canada – Mélanie Charbonneau
M¥CELIUM – Germany – Justus Toussaint
Mar – Spain – Fèlix Colomer
Mercurio – Italy – Marco Bernardi
Milk – Canada – Santiago Menghini
Milky Way – Italy – Valerio Rufo
My Tyson – Italy – Claudio Casale
Nessun dorma – Italy – Paolo Strippoli
Nightmare – Germany – Ana Maria Angel
Nightshade – Netherlands – Shady El-Hamus
Now We Can Die in Peace – Belgium – Arnaud Guez
Our Song to War – Belgium – Juanita Onzaga
Patchwork – Spain – Maria Manero Muro
Pepitas – Italy – Alessandro Sampaoli
Rapaz – Chile – Felipe Gálvez
Raymonde or the Vertical Escape – France – Sarah Van Den Boom
Rise of a Star – France – James Bort
Ronaldo – Turkey – Recep
Selfies – Switzerland – Claudius Gentinetta
Skip Day – United States – Ivete Lucas, Patrick Bresnan
Sluggish Life – Iran – Mohsen Mehri Deravi
Surgalove – Italy – Laura Luchetti
Sweet Night – Belgium – Lia Bertels
The Announcement – France – Romain Lafargue, Thibault Lafargue
The Bony Lady – Mexico – Thiago Zanato, Adriana Barbosa
The Camel Boy – Tunisia – Chabname Zariâb
The Death of Don Quixote – United Kingdom – Miguel Faus
The Divine Way – Germany – Ilaria Di Carlo
The Role – Iran – Farnoosh Samadi
The Shadow of the Bride – Italy – Alessandra Pescetta
The Silent Child – United Kingdom – Chris Overton
The Stained Club – France – Mélanie Lopez, Simon Boucly, Marie Ciesielski, Alice Jaunet, Chan Stéphie Peang, Béatrice Viguier
The Thwarted – France – Stéphanie Vasseur, Sandrine Terragno
Those Bad Things – Italy – Loris Giuseppe Nese
Tierra Mojada – Colombia – Juan Sebastián Mesa Bedoya
Tomatic – France – Christophe Saber
Too Young for a Memoir – United States – Case Jernigan
Voice – Japan – Takeshi Kushida
Volte – Poland – Monika Kotecka, Karolina Poryzała
Women Unseen – Spain – Omar Daher Guillén
You Idiot – Singapore – Kris Ong