The 41st Clermont-Ferrand International Short Film Festival closed on February 9th with the award-giving ceremony in the town’s Maison de la Culture.
For 9 days some 160,000 spectators, including 3,500 professionals, watched short films from around the world in a dozen locations in Clermont-Ferrand. The festival was organized around three competitions: international, national and the laboratory competition, which is for experimental shorts.
Chaired by British director Steve Hawley, the international jury included Canadian film-maker Caroline Monnet, Israeli director Nadav Lapid, Portuguese illustrator Susa Monteiro and South Korean director Ga-Eun Yoon. It awarded the Grand Prix to the Romanian short Cadoul de Cracium, directed by Bogdan Muresanu and starring Ioana Flora and Adrian Vancica. The film takes place on December 20th 1989, a few days after the Ceausescu regime’s brutal repression of protests in Timisoara, western Romania. A horrified father discovers that in his letter to Father Christmas, his son wrote that his dad wants Ceausescu’s death.
The Greek film by Thanasis Neofotistos, Leoforos Patision, received the Special Jury Award. This short film was first presented at the Venice Film Festival in 2018. It follows a woman, played by Marina Symeou, juggling between her role as a mother and her acting career. It takes place in Patision Street, Athens.
Note also the Jury Special Mention for Brotherhood by Tunisian-American director Meryam Joobeur. Winner of the Golden Tanit for Best Short Film at the 2018 Carthage Film Festival, Brotherhood is about a Tunisian jihadist returning to his native village after serving in Iraq and Syria. Accompanied by his very young pregnant wife, he re-joins his family – but his father cannot come to terms with his son’s past.
Find all the festival’s award-winners here: http://my.clermont-filmfest.com/index.php?m=65
Sources: https://www.libertatea.ro, https://information.tv5monde.com, https://nawaat.org
