International Shorts 3
No humans are seen in No Animal, but their presence is evident in a film that makes us consider the relationship with animals not only in film history, but in life.
Simone Smith’s (Slap, CIFF2018) THE MöBIUS TRIP is an anxiety soaked, nightmarish, family road trip. There is also anxiety in Hao Zhao’s NOW.HERE when a goalkeeper has to save a penalty, but there is comfort in the order of the game.
Inspired by Kate and Anna McGarrigle’s glorious “Complainte pour Ste-Catherine”, The Girl in the Red Beret is a joyful animated tribute to Montreal’s metro system. Why Are You Image Plus? takes an irreverent view of the religious hereafter, while Incidences struggles with the order of this world. But there is nothing more arbitrary then the lot of a security guard in If the Sun Drowned into an Ocean of Clouds.
NO ANIMAL
Christoph Girardet, Matthias Müller | 2023 | 21 mins | Germany
Time and again, the feature film places animal actors at the side of its human protagonists – sometimes as loyal companions, sometimes as fierce opponents. However, its stagings do not only instrumentalise animals to release emotions, but also raise a fundamental question of our anthropocentric self-image: how to deal with the experience of the otherness of the animal?
THE MÖBIUS TRIP
Simone Smith | 2023 | 17 mins | United Kingdom
A road trip pushes a dysfunctional family to the brink after their journey descends into a claustrophobic hallucinatory nightmare. THE MöBIUS TRIP is a darkly intimate and surreal portrayal of a chaotic family unit, confined in their car and fated in their familial roles.
NOW.HERE
Hao Zhao | 2023 | 11 mins | China | Subtitled
A goalkeeper is about to sub-in and face a penalty. Before the fleeting moment of glory eludes him, he wanders in between other pieces of memory, searching for a place and a reason to be here and now.
THE GIRL WITH THE RED BERET
Janet Perlman | 2023 | 6 mins | Canada
A girl takes a ride on the Montreal metro, which becomes the unlikely venue for a strange and wonderful musical journey.
WHY ARE YOU IMAGE PLUS?
Diogo Baldaia | 2023 | 9 mins | Portugal | Subtitled
In a small and poor village, a local Saint controls the realm of the abyss, making it impossible for dead people to talk to their loved ones who are still living. Ima, a curious dead child, tries to meet the Saint, so he can let her talk to her beloved grandmother.
INCIDENCES (FÄLLE)
Mischa Hedinger, Michela Flück | 2022 | 14 mins | Switzerland | Subtitled
A nameless man no longer manages to count further than six. A sequence of tragic-comic moments and strange encounters takes its course. Is the world slipping away from him? Loosely adapted from the famous work of the avant-garde poet Daniil Kharms, „Incidences“ tells of the search for sense in a nonsensical world.
IF THE SUN DROWNED INTO AN OCEAN OF CLOUDS
Wissam Charaf | 2023 | 20 mins | France, Lebanon | Subtitled
Beirut, Lebanon. On the waterfront’s construction site, security agent Raed must prevent passing-by walkers from accessing the seaside. Yet as the horizon becomes each day more stifled by the construction, Raed makes peculiar encounters — mere dreams, or symbols of his desires?
All films are eligible for the Grand Prix International Short Award.
