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Thrive (Jamie Di Spirito, 2019)
A sublimely intelligent and sensitive film, which sees a hook-up move into a challenging conversation. A naked man wakes up, lights up a cigarette and smokes out the window – through which the daylight outside illuminates the whole room. This is the only light source in the film, and it’s used brilliantly. Grindr buzzes. His date comes over, and they’re kissing almost before he’s through the door. The orange curtain is drawn, turning the generous daylight into a (...) Continue Reading »
INTERVIEW VIDEO TO COME
A silly (in all the best ways) short very much made for fun that certainly made me laugh! Glad it made it into the Clermont competition.
How much do you enjoy artistic experiments?
Cinema audiences these days are incredibly smart and cinema literate so it’s really fun to be mischievous and play with people’s expectations. This is the beauty of short film, it allows you to explore your weirdest ideas without having to satisfy a commercial agenda.
Why was the Kubrick (...) Continue Reading »
11 February 2020
Q&A with Ross McClean, dir. Hydebank - Clermont 2020
by Abla Kandalaft, Clotilde
Forced onto the Northern Irish countryside, Hydebank Wood Facility currently houses 104 young male offenders. Four years into his sentence, Ryan is still coming to terms with the cause of his imprisonment. The unlikely catharsis to his inner demons? A flock of sheep living inside the prisons walls.
Hydebank has certainly stood out in this year’s festival competitions for its particularly uplifting tone and heartwarming depiction of its subjects, human and animal. Director Ross McClean (...) Continue Reading »
11 February 2020
Q&A with Baloji, dir. Zombies - Clermont 2020 PRIX FESTIVALS CONNEXION AUVERGNE-RHÔNE-ALPES
by Clotilde
The film "Zombie" is a journey between hope and dystopia in a hallucinated Kinhsasa, from the culture of the hair salon to futuristic solitary clubbing, from the urban parade to the glory of a dictator in campaign (Papa Bollo) to modern western in the Takeshi Kitano style. In parallel, the film is based on the almost carnal relationship we have with our phones. The device becoming like an outgrowth of the hand and giving us the talent of digital ubiquity...
Baloji is a multidisciplinary (...) Continue Reading »
10 February 2020
Q&A with Aurélie Reinhorn, dir. Raout Pacha - Double winner - Prix du rire « Fernand Raynaud » & Canal+ Award for the National Competition - Clermont 2020 Grand Prize
by Abla Kandalaft
Two lost souls are required to undertake community service in a small town in Normandy. As it happens, the clean and tidy beach resort doens’t actually need any of the work they’ve been assigned and they start making up a series of absurd tasks to carry out.
A proper laugh-out-loud short, Raout Pacha is also a damning indictment of the world of work. Reinhorn specifically questions the validity of this sort of compulsory unpaid work that ultimately benefits nobody. Her portrayal of the (...) Continue Reading »
A foreigner in Ghana gets an assignment from his gang to recruit kids for a risky job that will take place later that evening. He finds Prince and Matilda, two lively kids and good friends, and plans to hand them over to the gang. After spending the day with them, he starts to question his decision and how it will affect their future.
Shot on a very low budget, Anthony Nti’s Da Yie (good night)’s style is uncannily reminiscent of City of God and indeed the Brazilian film is one of his main (...) Continue Reading »
9 February 2020
Q&A with Farah Nabulsi, dir. The Present - Clermont 2020 Audience Award
by Abla Kandalaft
On his wedding anniversary, Yusef and his young daughter set out in the West Bank to buy his wife a gift. Between soldiers, segregated roads and checkpoints, how easy would it be to go shopping?
British-Palestinian Farah Nabulsi is relatively new to filmmaking, which can come as a surprise given just how adept she is at provoking the most rousing emotions in her viewers by telling a fairly simple story. The audience award that she deservedly won in Clermont clearly highlights just how (...) Continue Reading »
A son arrives at the hospital to watch over his father’s death bed. When the son wants one last nice moment, his father would rather find out what to do with the two opened cans of mustard.
Awaiting Death is a deceptively simple and sombre short. Through minor exchanges and limited dialogue, the directors manage to convey a nuanced and very human relationship with characteristic deadpan humour, getting a delicate balance in tone just right.
More on the film...
How did you come up with (...) Continue Reading »
Clara and Marie are rival competitors for the title of Miss Chazelles-sur-Lyon. As Marie is declared winner of a local beauty pageant, tension escalates between both girls’s families and supporters.
Miss Chazelles, Aesthetica 2019’s Best Drama award-winner, is a warm, irreverent and somewhat terrifying look at the word of regional pageants and the resulting drama. Despite the absurdity of the situation and its more ridiculously over-the-top behaviour, Thomas Vernay’s portrayal is never (...) Continue Reading »
7 February 2020
Q&A with Gabrielle Stemmer, dir. Clean With Me (After Dark)
by Abla Kandalaft
Through a very clever and revealing video montage, Gabrielle Stemmer not only sheds light on somewhat depressing phenomenon of cleaning videos on YouTube but silently and subtly unearths the loneliness and neuroses that often underpin it, in a society in which women are homemakers and the home is their gilded cage.
How did you discover the “world” of YouTube?
I’ve been a heavy YouTube user for seven or eight years now – it’s TV for me. I’d say that from the beginning I’ve been watching stuff (...) Continue Reading »
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