AWARDS 2023

SCIARABALLA

by Mino Capuano

This short film knows when it is time to leave, to loose. It knows that you can’t tell a story throughout a single scene, but throughout addition and subtraction – thoroughly choosing when to quit and how to narrate. Sciaraballa begins vaguely but becomes persuading as the narration goes ahead. It tells a bittersweet story – with a sensitive and accurate directing – revealing an ungrammatical and ruffled poetic, efficiently aimed at filling a void.

BLACK EYED DOG

by Alessandro Cino Zolfanelli

A piece imprinted of great sensibility, capable of building a considerable strain in terms of style. With a stop-motion production, challenging both for an economic perspective and for its making in itself.

JACK AND SAM

by Jordan Matthew Horowitz

A short film that – although in a rhetoric dimension – stands out for its ability to deepen an important matter such as the memory of the Shoah, particularly relevant at the moment due to the Israelian-Palestinian conflict and the recurring and concerning outbreaks of antisemitism all around the world. The film is touching and moving, rousing the sensibility of the audience in a nontrivial way.

ROSEMARY A.D. (AFTER DAD)

by Ethan Barrett

With its childlike and primordial aesthetics, this short film is capable of capturing the essence of fatherhood throughout an original stream of consciousness – infusing a deep emotional richness into a real story.

DONDE LOS NIÑOS NO SUEÑAN

by Stefano Sbrulli

For its report on the dreadful conditions of Cerro de Pasco (in Peru) – one of the most polluted cities in the world. Its storytelling and documentary device accurately balances humanity and tragedy, formality and empathy, fieldwork and poetic detachment.

HAPPY NEW YEAR, JIM

by Andrea Gatopoulos

Throughout the experimental language of cyber realism the director represents virtual reality by using its original source without reconstructing it. This approach develops an innovative narration leading the audience to question themselves on the bounders of real world and virtual world.

MÉTÉORES

by Agnès Patron & Morgane Le Péchon

A music video standing out for an impacting and original poetic.

MUSHKA

by Andreas Deja

THE ONE NOTE MAN

by George C. Siougas

Motivation of the students from Polo Scientifico Tecnologico Enrico Fermi”:

For the great artistic awareness of this short film capable of representing a particular love story throughout the expansion and restraint of time and rhytm, the subversion of a mechanical routine and the evolution of the music – becoming a fil rouge that leads the audience to live this tender and surprising story first-hand.

Motivation of the students from Polo Umanistico “Ovidio”:

The one note man is a very suggestive short film showing how life can change overnight and take a surprising turn. The main character is able to love again after a period of severe mourning, thanks to music that brings people together. The bassoonist protagonist represents a man getting used – almost addicted – to sorrow. The film shows how suffering feeds solitude and turns human beings into automatons, dragging themselves into their daily existence always carrying out the same dull gestures and actions. But something unpredictable changes the game: it is chance, disrupting the routine and presenting a new possibility to the suffering man, reluctant to seizing the opportunity, even if worthy of one. The films looks like a Christmas tale, with a happy ending leading the man to find comfort, joy and hope into someone.

Guilherme Daniel

for APPLAUSE

Somewhere between Larrain and Ingmar Bergman – especially for its vivid work on closeups – it is a short film with a powerful directing, extraordinary actors and an interesting and original editing. Its pure cinematic grammar is capable of rendering a performance solely consisting of 14 minutes of applause. Its style employs the applause both as the editing and the soundtrack, finding its unique and original directorial vision.

Annie-Claude Caron & Danick Audet

for DEAD CAT

An ingenious short film for the way its writing moves within the comedy: every scene presents a solution providing the joy and enthusiasm of sharing the film with other viewers and recounting it at home after watching it for the first time. The dazed tone of the film makes it hard to find the “right timing”, but this is fixed in a hilarious and brilliant way, simple but clever. All this nourishes our expectations on the first feature-film of these two Canadian filmakers, Ugly, already in the working.

Afsaneh Dehrouyeh

for YELLOW

Two performances of disarming but overwhelming simplicity – both able to give significance to every line transcending the value of the short films. The bewilderment of their acting is never flaunted but it rather appears to be consistently devastating. With a significant focus on the condition of Afghan women after the privation of their freedom due to the rise of Taliban government in Afghanistan since April of the past year. If Kendra Sow recalls prestigious oriental actresses of the new millennium (such as the ones from Hou Hsiao-hsien to Wong Kar-wai), the Afghan actress Afsaneh Dehrouyeh almost looks like a feminine embodiment of the paintings by Antonello da Messina – also due to the chromatic directing choices with the use of soft and poetic streaks of blue hues.

Vincenzo Nemolato

for THE DELAY

For the Buster Keaton-way of the actor of dealing with a story of 15 minutes without never really saying a word. The versatility of its acting is capable of rendering an extremely interesting anachronistic performance, with the actor carrying the entire film on his back. Outdated, in a stubborn and contrary direction opposed to the present, with the precise intention of acting out of time.

Ben Mullen

for SHADOW BROTHER SUNDAY

For its remarkable use of 35mm, worthy of the master of American contemporary cinema Paul Thomas Anderson.

Russell Beeden

for THE ONE NOTE MAN

For its exceptional editing, based on musical scanning and intersection of framing.

Fernando Velázquez

for THE LAST CALL

For an impressive and unique sound mix, capable of highlighting with subtlety the familiar and moral emotions of the short film, reaching a real live musical “performance” to support the images and reinforce their effect.