Shorts

Where did the idea for Le temps d’une nuit come from? A friend of mine disappeared without giving any signs of life for several months. When I found her at a party at someone’s house who I barely knew, she was euphoric and I hardly recognized her. The three of us spent the night together until the early morning. It was a timeless night. After that, I started to drift away from the real events and I worked hard on the characters, on their backstory, on the exact nature of their relationship (…)

How have you met Camilo Najar? I met Camilo 6 years ago at a party. When I saw him, he immediately caught my attention, he was a special guy, with his curly hair, and super thin. Besides that, he had an overwhelming personality. I will always remember a phrase that he told me “I care more about having acne than being gay”. Do you often deal with lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender issues in your films and will you in the future? I think I am portraying my generation and this (…)

Café court / Expresso Video - Anna Szöllősi from ClermontFd Short Film Festival on Vimeo. How would you describe the crisis the woman is facing? To what extent is the helper helping? The woman is struggling with anxiety and has an intense fear of death. She also has constant nightmares about drowning. She wants to become free from this existential fear and is asking for immortality from the helper. The helper is offering her a solution, but unfortunately, it has its consequences. I (…)

"Stacey" an anxiety ridden, lonely, keyboard-warrior recluse hopelessly tries to convince his favourite young friend Ellie, that he too is a teenage girl, with the desperate hope that she’ll send him the pictures he craves. Sam White impressive debut short strikes just the right balance of comedy and creepiness. She handles the short format expertly, as her set design and stylistic choices contribute to the crescendo of the characters’ interactions, leading to a satisfying punchline. The (…)

A father pays his son a visit after years of conflict and turns up in the middle of his house move. The son Vincent reacts violently to that intrusion. Emotionally weakened, the father involuntarily reveals the true reason of his visit, which revives the tension between them. Within a few minutes, the anger, the memories and the crossed looks move the two men deeply. Vincent Before Noon won the Audience Prize at the Winter edition of Emerging Filmmakers Night. Mainguet delivers a (…)

What motivated you to tell this story? Do many people find themselves in this “transit” situation in Bangladesh? I have always wanted my films to be about the common man, the type of characters whose stories are not as often seen in modern cinema. Blended with that is migration, which I feel is a very important topic in a global context. Every year, thousands of Bangladeshi workers travel to the Middle East, South East Asia, and even to Europe for work. To some people, having that visa to (…)

What materials did you use to create the characters? The puppets’ bodies are made of silicone. We make a sculpture, then a mould where we place a frame made of aluminum wire that helps it keep its stance. Then we pour in the silicone which will take the shape of the initial sculpture as it hardens. A dab of paint (tinted silicone), costumes and voilà! The figures’ heads (for the other children) are moulded in polyurethane resin, a hard material. They’re hollow, so they’re lighter. The (…)

Why were you interested in the hide-and-seek game as a starting point? The game of hide-and-seek didn’t really come first. I was muddling about with some ideas to do with my situation of moving from my home country, and all the different types of buildings and faces I saw around me, and I took a piece of one of these stories and focused on that, because it felt like it was doing what I wanted it to do with the emotions I wanted to conjure in an audience. That was the game of hide-and-seek. (…)

I notice the film was directed by yourself and written by Sam Lazar. How did that collaborative process come about? Did you develop the idea together or where you involved as a director after the script was written? I came on board after the script was written so had no correspondence with Sam. However, he kindly trusted me to edit the script and so I re-structured it a little bit to work within my vision and I also made some of the language more "Irish" (Sam is American). Did you have (…)

The film is set in a village in Nagaland in 1963. It follows the life of a father and his son, the last ones to convert to Christianity in their village. The film follows their struggle to hold on to their tradition and religion. Café court / Expresso Video - Theja Rio from ClermontFd Short Film Festival on Vimeo. The film is in International Competition (I3 programme).