Shorts

On a hot August afternoon, the family gathers at the table. The memories of each are crossed to tell the story of uncle Botão. From the dictatorship to the emigration to France, where he worked as a garbage man, and when he arrived with the van filled with “garbage”he transformed into treasures. What a man uncle Botão clearly was! Laura Gonçalves paints a tender and heart-warming portrait of a hard-working man who seems to have been as eccentric as he was likeable. Café court / Short (…)

CIVIC is a short film that follows Booker on his first trip back home to South Central, L.A. after several years of self-imposed exile. Without any clear motive, or even a warning, Booker returns to the place that holds his origins and the people who shaped him. An impressively mature and reflective debut short by Dwayne LeBlanc. There is a lot to unpack from Booker’s journey through his past, but this gives the film richness and texture as opposed of weighty and opaque complexity. (…)

The Voyager probe is about to leave our solar system. At the same time, on Earth, Alain Diaw begins his first day of work in a prestigious automobile company. He has come a long way and is also aiming for the unknown. Soufiane Adel’s Le Jour où j’étais perdu (the title is taken from James Baldwin’s book) is a beautiful and graphically ambitious meditation on social, physical and technological mobility, merging an individual’s own desire to reach for the unknown and the ambitions of the (…)

“Nothing can be heard anymore; the roar of our plane absorbs every other sound. We are heading straight to the world’s biggest display of soundproof fireworks, and soon we will drop our bombs.” Palestinian filmmaker and artist Kamal Aljafari has built a solid reputation for his cutting-edge experimental filmmaking over the years, with work shown at the Berlinale, Locarno, Venice.... and here in Clermont-Ferrand! Aljafari’s new film certainly doesn’t disappoint. Its title is taken from a (…)

Set in Kabul, Afghanistan. Pari, an in-house tailor, must find the means to purchase her prescription glasses to save her job. I did a double take when Salar came on to this video interview. I’ll be honest and say that I expected him to be a woman. Salar has a real knack for writing female characters. Bad Omen is an intelligent, well-crafted story and I look forward to seeing more of Salar’s work. He joined us at the Brasserie du Court for this quick interview:

Shooting on location in Taliban-controlled Afghanistan, director Salar Pashtoonyar uses a thought-provoking yet powerfully humane hybrid of documentary and fiction to delve deep into the experience of a woman forced to the edge of her society. This is the second short Salar has had in competition at the Clermont-Ferrand Film Festival. Bad Omen, which was in competition last year, showcased his ability to write three dimensional and complex female characters. In Hills And Mountains, yet (…)

3 retired women travel by bus to discover Europe. They’ve recently lost their husbands and now it’s time to start living. They’ve heard people talk about the wonders of tourism all their lives and are dying to experience them firsthand. "I love them, they are so brave!" responded director Enrique Buleo to a question about his feelings towards those three ladies. Why? They have the courage to openly dislike quite a lot of their travels. Good on them for being so blunt! What a change from (…)

Living on the edge of the most polluted zip codes in the US, an actor prepares for a role. Daron Colbert is an aspiring actor and like so, so many of his peers, he’s toiling away at his day job, hoping the next audition will clinch the deal. Kevin Steen’s short is about much more than that though, it is a tender and respectful portrait of a genuinely likeable man. Similar films have had uncomfortable mocking undertones, but there is none of those here. Rather, Steen has opted for a sort of (…)

On his way to England for an urgent transport, Merlin, an exhausted 50-years-old driver, begins to hear haunting voices from the back of his locked truck. An impressive mix of grit and poetry drives the miserable, heart-wrenching fate of migrant workers home. By encasing this in a more esoteric depiction of loneliness against the harsh lines of its looming background of trucks and highways, Leo avoids pathos and allows his film to resonate for a long time. How did you happen to think of (…)

Very amusing and highly inventive animation around the themes of recycling and reincarnation! What was the starting point for the inspiration of the film? Are you particularly fond of certain objects? We based the film around the theme “recycle what is not of use” and we thought that for once, it would be interesting if the material to be recycled were humans. This led us to the following question: If given the choice, what would we like to be recycled into? The set is mostly composed (…)