WINNERS OF THE VII NEFILTRAVANAE KINO

NEFILTRAVANAE KINO-2021: VII SHORT MOVIE CLUB FILM FESTIVAL ANNOUNCES AWARD WINNERS


It’s time to bring up the results. The festival jury helped select the best films from the festival’s competition programs. We thank all festival participants, volunteers, and the audience for their interest.




GRAND-PRIX

GOOD GERMAN WORK

Jannis Alexander Kiefer (Germany, 14 min)

short film Kollegen

The two craftspeople Uli and Didi are working on a swastika in their workshop somewhere between rural idyll and village dreariness, wondering about the strange newcomers in the village.


THE BEST EXPERIMENTAL FILM

THE STONE GUEST

Marina Fomenko (Russia, 8 min)

Marina Fomenko film director

The key figure of the Great October Socialist Revolution of 1917 in Russia was Lenin. After his death in 1924 Lenin’s image was immortalized in countless numbers of monuments in the Soviet Union and in the Soviet bloc’s countries. In her video, the artist refers to depicted in stone image of the Revolution leader based on archival materials and found footage. There is neither living nor dead Lenin in the film; only “the stone guest” becomes ingrained in Soviet people’s lives after his death. The “birth” of each new stone Lenin is accompanied by a special ritual with speeches and festivities before a vast assembly. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the life cycle of the “stone guest” is coming to the end.



THE BEST DOCUMENTARY

LINES OF EXILE

Eric Patrick (United States, 7 min)

short film documentary

Hamid Naficy’s fifty years of drawings of prominent scholars, philosophers, and theorists form a unique index of the evolution of cultural theory over the last decades. In this portrait, Naficy intimately recounts this evolution through his drawings.


SPECIAL MENTION | DOCUMENTARY SECTION

EXTRACTS

Sinai Sganzerla (Brazil, 8 min)

documentary short film "Extras"

Extracts is a short film with images from 1970 to 1972 in the cities of Rio de Janeiro, Salvador, London, Marrakech, Rabat and the Sahara Desert. Filmed by Helena Ignez and Rogério Sganzerla in exile in the lead years of the military dictatorship.


SPECIAL MENTION | DOCUMENTARY SECTION

DAKHLA: CINEMA AND OBLIVION

Arturo Dueñas Herrero (Spain, 15 min)

Documentary short film

Life is going on in Dakhla, one of the Sahrawi refugee camps in southern Algeria, forgotten for 44 years. Since they cannot go to the cinema, the cinema reaches them: the celebration of Fisahara breaks the monotony. With it come foreigners, politicians, artists, journalists … The event ends and life (and oblivion) continues. As for 44 years.



THE BEST ANIMATION

IHR

Amélie Cochet, Louis Möhrle (Switzerland, 6 min)

IHR (THEM) is a story about a building with an inner courtyard and its inhabitants. While the different character follows their everyday routines, trash slowly begins to pile up in the courtyard. What seems harmless in the beginning, one night escalates to a total disaster.


SPECIAL MENTION | ANIMATION SECTION

PER ASPERA AD ASTRA

Franck Dion (France, 11 min)


“Per Aspera Ad Astra” by Franck Dion deserves special mention for metaphorical representation of human life by creating original imagery and story-telling.


Per Aspera Ad Astra (short film)

The daily life of a little hen housekeeper, torn between her work, her children and her old mother. < Film Website>


SPECIAL MENTION | ANIMATION SECTION

ESCAPE VELOCITY

Tamás Rebák (Hungary, 8 min)

animation short film

Escape velocity: the minimum speed needed for an object to escape from the gravitational influence of a massive body, without ever falling back.

An astronaut awakens in an abandoned cave of a strange planet. An interstellar vagabond, so to say. A light path leads him to the surface, where he looks at his compass and heads for his spaceship. He keeps glancing back, treading nervously, looking afraid. He has been chased by a creature for a long time, and his only way to break free is to escape this curious planet. < Film Website>



THE BEST FICTION FILM

BEAR HILL PATH

Tatjana Moutchnik (Germany, 19 min)

short film

Thorbjörn, an opera singer from Berlin, visits his parents in his Icelandic hometown. While they’re planning a party for his 40th birthday, Tobbi rather wants to hide away.


SPECIAL MENTION | FICTION SECTION

BALLAST

Daniel Howlid (Poland, 18 min)


for conveying behavioural and emotional dynamics, revealing “cause and effect” relationship, expressing the central theme and idea in the title, convincing non-verbal acting.


short film "Ballast"

Family meeting. Lack of adult attention, upbringing mistakes, as well as unstable emotional ties and disrupted relationships, lead a young neglected child to destructive behaviour from which there is no turning back. Tragedy hangs by a thread…



THE BEST BELARUSSIAN FILM

BOUNDARIES

Yulia Shatun (2019, 30 min)

The film starts as a voice message to an unknown person which the director is recording in a train nearing a boundary until the connection is interrupted.
Approaching the boundary of the country is transforming into searching for the boundaries of cinema and her own existence., The camera producing the atmosphere of a stretchy, but difficult to perceive time. The documentary shots of the cities existing now are combined with the shots of the same cities and people who passed away, captured 25 years ago by the director’s father. The space of four cities and dozens of years are fading away and eventually converging at one point – the black screen.
The journey is accompanied by the glimmering voice of the author who continues to record the voice message to an invisible person on the other end < Film Website>


SPECIAL MENTION | BELARUSSIAN SECTION

A FEW WORDS ABOUT MY MOTHER AND HER DOG

Tatiana Svirepa (2020, 17 min)


“A few words about my mother and her dog” by Tatiana Svirepa for conveying the hidden meaning behind the ordinary things, portraying a real life character and her everyday dilemmas. The film director showed perfectly how a woman who is not fully aware of a “global danger” appreciates the present moment and keeps dwelling on her past experiences rather than thinking about global challenges and having a “big picture”.

The events depicted in the film take place in a small town, at the time of the outbreak of the coronavirus epidemic. We don’t have a lockdown, so my mother continues to go to work, to the store, thinking about security measures as a necessity, but that thought is far from her. She is not taking the disease seriously, treating it as another element of the everyday bustle, which is integrated into everyday life, but far from рher nature. Mother relaxes and feels real only when she is together with nature: when she hugs her beloved dog and goes with it for a walk far away from everyday worries, when she spends time in memories and legends that she came up with, sadly realizing that tomorrow she will have to return to her unloved work again.



PEOPLE’S CHOICE

MIND MENDING

Markus Schröder (United Kingdom, 17 min)


Jury’s Special Mention: “Mind Mending” by Markus Schröder for demonstrating person’s ambivalent feelings and complex emotional spectrum.


Filipe is only 36 when he suffers a stroke performing on stage with his heavy metal band. Believing that live music will help his recovery, and frustrated by his aphasia, a communication disorder brought on by stroke, Filipe attempts to reconnect with the world by visiting music festivals dressed as a bunny rabbit.

After showing signs of improvement, the stress and anxiety caused by his ambition plunge him into depression and epilepsy. He perseveres, but a new diagnosis of bipolar disorder lands him in hospital, following a dramatic and confusing visit to the United States.

As he learns to accept that bunny will always be with him, Filipe finally gets a grip on reality when a fresh ray of hope gives him a new perspective. < Film Website>


PEOPLE’S CHOICE | BELARUSSIAN SECTION | SPECIAL MENTION

WHEN I WAS GENERAL

Yuriy Semashko (2021, 12 min)

The incredible adventures of the General, who, on the orders of the Queen, went to distant lands to find a mysterious bird, the last hope of a dying kingdom.