Category: SHORT films

ISLAND

Israel, 2022, 7’38’’, 2D animation

director Michael Faust

‘Island’ recounts the history of a small secluded island over the course of several millennia, to reveal a telling lesson about human nature. From the island’s rise to riches to its ultimate fall into ruins, the film explores the island’s different chapters over time: a heap of boulders, a massive guano deposit, a tropical oasis, a colonial territory, a prosperous republic, and an open-pit mine eventually devouring the island to the point of bankruptcy and desolation.

AMOK

Hungary, 2022, 14’17’’, 2D animation

director Balázs Turai

After losing his fiancée and his good looks in a freak accident, Clyde must confront his inner demon.

THE BEE AND THE FLY

China, 2023 ,6’50’’, cutout animation

director Xia Su

An absurd world in two little insects’ eyes. The innocent Bee came to live in a big city, blending himself with the scheming Fly into the local corrupt officialdom day and night, witnessing all kinds of strange things in this world. After encountering many absurd events, the Bee gradually turned into a parasite just like his friend.

BEAUTIFUL FIGURES

Belgium, 2022, 4’, mixed media

director Soetkin Verstegen

Thoughts ripple over the pages of a personal notebook, kept during a stay at different science labs in Zürich. They float from one to another, like a mind map of unfinished ideas on memory, medical imaging, cells, and aging.

ICE MERCHANTS

Portugal, 2023, 14’00’’, 2D digital animation

director João Gonzalez

Every day, a father and his son jump with a parachute from their vertiginous cold house, attached to a cliff, to go to the village on the ground, far away where they sell the ice they produce daily.

THE WITCH’S LULLABY

Netherlands, 2022, 4’02’’

director Dasha Vyatkina

Grandma Yaga is torn between the need to be close to her son and the desire to dance the night away with her witch friends. Will she have to make a choice, or will she be able to combine both of these roles with a little help from her friends?

BEING TEN

Iran, 2023, 18’, stop-motion animation

director Fatemeh Jafari

A father and his ten-year-old son live in a lonely cottage in the middle of a dense wood. The father, a hunter, spares one of his prizes and brings it home as a present for his son. What, at first, was just a plaything forever will change the young boy’s life.

A BOAT IN THE RAIN

Bulgaria, 2023, 9’57’’

director Yoana Atanasova

A Woman and a Man are going through a breakup. Left alone, he remembers their dance of love. A storm comes and only the tiny folded boat may save them. However, the rough sea is full of dangers.

EMPTY LITTLE PEOPLE

Ireland, 2023, 2’15’’, 2D animation

director Josh O’Caoimh, Mikai Geronimo

Empty little people, with an insatiable thirst for tea… begin running out of tea, on All Hallows’ Eve.

PIG

Netherlands, 2022, 8’, 2D animation

director Jorn Leeuwerink

A big group of animals makes itself dependent on a power grid, hooked onto the socket-shaped snout of a single sleeping pig… How long will that last?

MELTING

Portugal, 2022, 12’, 2D animation

director Susana Miguel António, Filipa Gomes da Costa

They ignore each other hoping to become the other’s object of desire. Failing by tactical symmetry, they allow such desire to burn away. One day, as their paths cross, all they exchange is a cold nod.  

BIRD

Argentina, 2023, 4’08’’, sand animation

director Carlos Montoya

A man carries heavy stones. In the sky, a bird flies.

THE LOVELY SKY

Iran, 2022, 14’, 2D animation

director Amir Mehran

An impatient fighter pilot bombs cities every day. He returns to his little girl every night after completing his mission. The girl loves to fly, but the father doesn’t fulfill his daughter’s dream because of the bitter memory of his wife’s death. The war is getting closer every day. One day an incident changes their life forever.

PARK VOYAGE

Hong Kong, 2022, 3’13’’, 2D animation

director Florence Yuk Ki Lee

Delineates and navigates Hong Kong, the hometown of Florence Lee (the creator of this film), translating her personal memories tied to the city, featuring Lee’s signature hand-drawn, frame-by-frame animated video works. The looseness of the drawings allows the works to maintain temporal and locational ambiguity and thus be expansive. Not at the peril of succumbing to the seductive power of glowing memories or the sense of comfort brought by escapism fantasies, Lee’s practice playfully de-gravitates the here-and-now and tellingly illustrates contemporary lamentations and desires.

DOG-APARTAMENT

Estonia, 2023, 14’14’’, stop-motion animation

director Priit Tender

Ills of fortune have deported a ballet dancer Sergei to a suburban kolhoz. Here he’s having his mundane fights against routine, domestic animals and alcohol.

AN END TO WAR ENOUGH

Italy, 2022, 5’

director Simone Massi

A world without war is another utopia that we cannot wait any longer.

A LAND OF SORROW

Taiwan, 2022, 3’52’’, 2D animation

director Shi- Rou Huang

“A Land of Sorrow” is a land we can all arrive at through our sorrows. When there’s only devastation and heartbreak, when we feel the world is a wasteland, we all have been there. Therefore, I can show you and tell you that you’re not alone. We’re connected through our sorrows. There’s healing and there’s always a hope.

ALL MY SCARS VANISH IN THE WIND

Columbia, 2022, 14’18’’, 3D animation

director María Angélica Restrepo, Carlos David Velandia

Among intrusive and sought-after memories, a woman hears a disconcerting call from the depths of her being. A cryptic cry for help that becomes more and more intelligible guides her to the original wound, to her inner child, to whom she will give comfort to finally become her own protector.

JUXTAPOSED LAND

Poland, 2023, 7’47’, hand-drawn animation

director ALIMO

I have been forced to become more aware of the country and its borders than I have ever been before. In the midst of these days, I took a walk with my 0-year-old daughter and wondered what she was feeling as she saw different landscapes for the first time. I imagined a world where I existed and my loved ones did not. I imagined a world with loved ones and without me. One day, such a world will surely come. I want to be the landscape of my loved ones.

FROM ONE PAINTING… TO ANOTHER

Switzerland, 2023, 3’10’’, classical 2D animation

director Georges Schwizgebel       

An immersion in art through two paintings on the same subject created half a century apart.

LA SAISON POURPRE

France, 2023, 9’40’’, hand-drawn animation

director Clémence Bouchereau

On the edge of a mangrove, a group of girls live to the rhythm of the climate and the wild geese around them. They watch each other live and grow up at different ages. As time passes, tensions arise and rivalries develop.

ЕLECTRA

Czech Republic, 2023, 25’

director Daria Kashcheeva

Electra rethinks her 10th birthday, mixing memories with imagination and hidden dreams. Isolated in her fantasy world full of made-up busty dolls, plastic men’s body parts, juicy strawberries and dentist tools, she builds up her own relationships with her body and sexuality.

DEPERSONALIZATION

Bulgaria, 2023, 7’07’’, hand-drawn animation

director Spartak Yordanov

The film interprets the theme of the loss of personality, the so-called “depersonalization” – a state in which the individual loses the ability to feel the image of himself, his emotions, even his body. The world of the film is created through the movement of pigment, paint, fluid by the use of “painting under the camera” technique. The events flow into each other, degenerate in the logic of some irreversible and unnatural randomness. Their metamorphosis collides the evolutionary course with its opposite – the tree grows and buries his crown back into the earth, the world returns to primal matter, the consumer is consumed.

11

Croatia, 2022, 5’28’’, hand-drawn animation

director Vuk Jevremovic

Three masters of football. They can perform wonders during the match and score impossible goals, but what goes on in their heads when they are about to take penalty kicks?

ALL GOOD

Spain, 2023, 6’, 3D animation

director Diana Acién Manzorro

A pandemic and two different people under one same roof. The trigger for everything is a sneeze. Anna and Vicent are forced to live with the new reality exceeding the limit of the absurd.

THE LONG LEGGED MAN

Portugal, 2023, 9’, 2D animation

director Vitor Hugo Rocha

In a blank space, a barrel organ player with pin-tipped feet gets bored. He takes the risk of tracing in the ground a dance that makes him see what he stopped listening to.

TWENTYTИƎWT

Hong Kong, 2023, 7’, stop-motion photo animation

director Max Hattler

Shot entirely from an apartment on the 36th floor of a high-rise building, the images in this experimental animation survey large parts of Hong Kong’s cityscape, drawing attention to the individual lives hidden inside its buildings – together alone, collectively sequestered. Initially recorded in 2020 and completed in 2023 with the advantage of critical distance, TWENTYTИƎWT (“Twenty-Twenty”) attempts to encapsulate the darkness, confinement, and uncertainty of 2020 – the year of the global pandemic and the introduction of Hong Kong’s national security law.

EEVA

Estonia, 2023, 15’57’’, 2D animation

director Lucija Mrzljak, Morten Tšinakov

It’s a sad day in Eva’s life. The rain is pouring down at her husband’s funeral. A woodpecker delivered a message code on the coffin and was killed. There is a lot of crying, too much wine, and a couple of dreams that fill in the gaps.

NUN OR NEVER!

Finland, 2023, 10’, 2D animation

director Heta Jäälinoja

The nuns live in the monastery in contentment and harmony, fused together. One of the nuns finds a man underground while digging potatoes. The nun begins to dream of a man, goes mad and loses a common rhythm with others.

FAMILY PORTRAIT

Croatia, 2023, 14’30’’, stop-motion animation

director Lea Vidakovic

As Austro-Hungary teeters on collapse, Andras and his daughter are taken aback by the visit from Andras’ brother, Zoltan, who comes accompanied by his large family.

TRACE

Bulgaria, 2023, 6’42’’, hand-drawn animation

director Asparuh Petrov

А young writer dedicates his nights to hunting entangled phrases with his pen. The moment he is confronted with the pregnancy of his wife his world collapses. Lingering fears and painful memories overwhelm him and he needs to trace the missing piece.

GARRANO

Portugal, 2022, 14’08’’, 2D animation

director Vasco Sá, David Doutel

A Garrano horse is forced to pull a heavy load under a blazing sun. Young boy Joel discovers a man who is about to set a forest on fire.

THE GIRL WITH THE RED BERET

Canada, 2023, 5’35’’, 2D animation

director Janet Perlman

A girl takes a wild ride on the metro in Montreal. Traveling from station to station, she encounters an array of colourful characters in a bizarre musical journey that’s peppered with hilarious and unexpected incidents. This joyful, heartwarming animated film portrays Montreal in all its vitality, creativity and diversity, with plenty of humor and good cheer, to the tune of Kate and Anna McGarrigle’s timeless hit “Complainte pour Ste-Catherine.”

GRANNY’S SEXUAL LIFE

Slovenia, 2021, 13’40’’, 2D animation

director Urška Djukić, Émilie Pigeard

Four old women, reflect on their memories of old times when they were young and how different the relationships between men and women were back then. Their voices merge into one single voice, that of the grandmother Vera, who tells her story in proper detail. A trip into grandmother’s youth and the memories of her intimate life illustrate the status of Slovenian women in the first half of the 20th century.

EMILY

China, 2022, 3’15’’, 2D animation

director Yiyang Sun

You are the only one who can smell me, imagine all the passers-by as you. Never thought when we would depart. Enjoy that unpredicted encounter.

27

France, 2023, 10’38’’, 2D animation

director Flóra Anna Buda

Alice is 27 years old today. Even though she is suffocating a bit, she still lives with her parents and tends to live in her dreams to escape her dreary everyday life. After a psychedelic party on a factory roof, she has a serious drunken bike accident. Will this give her the courage to become an adult?