THE AWARDS
JURY: Best of the Festival Award Flounder (Elizabeth Hobbs, UK)
One day a humble fisherman catches an enchanted fish. Can the fish help him and his wife improve their lot?
JURY: Best British Film Award Bloomers (Samantha Moore, UK)
The story of a lingerie factory in Manchester. Workers recount the history of Headen & Quarmby, UK manufacturing, and traditions of making.
JURY: Best Sound Design Award Flounder (Carola Bauckholt)
One day a humble fisherman catches an enchanted fish. Can the fish help him and his wife improve their lot?
JURY: Best Abstract Film Award Matter and Motion (Max Hattler, Hong Kong/Germany)
Motion creation, energy transmission, kinetic combustion.
JURY: Best Children’s Film Award 0-7 Cat Lake City (Antje Heyn, Germany)
Percy Cat is looking forward to a relaxing day in “Cat Lake City” – the cats’ holiday paradise.
JURY: Best Children’s Film Award 8+ Lost and Found (Andrew Goldsmith & Bradley Slabe, Australia)
A knitted toy dinosaur has to unravel itself to save the love of its life.
JURY: Best Music Video Mashrou’ Leila – ‘Radio Romance’
(Vladimir Mavounia-Kouka, France)
JURY: BEST Late Night Bizarre It’s Wet (Alexis Godard & Nan Huang, France)
A narcissistic woman lives without worrying about the world around her and ignorant of the natural cycle she is part of.
JURY: SPECIAL MENTIONS
Chk Chk Chk – Couldn’t Have Known (Cheng-Hsu Chung, UK/USA)
Special Mention for Music Video
Per Tutta la Vita (Roberto Catani, France/Italy)
During a journey to the origins of their memory, a woman and a man retrace the most important moments of their story of love.
Umbilical (Danski Tang, USA)
An intimate and honest conversation between mother and daughter reflecting on the impact of abusive parental relationships and being a woman growing up in China.
Sweet Night (Lia Bertels, Belgium)
During the Himalayan winter, a bear struggles to sleep. When a white monkey suggests they go to eat some honey at his aunts, a beautiful winter night surrounds them.
Kids (Michael Frei, Switzerland)
A bunch of faceless people make decisions based on no real logic at all.
Special Mention for Sound
COMPETITION PROGRAMME VOTING
Voting for Best International Competition Programme 1: Abstract Showcase
JURY: Matter and Motion (Max Hattler, Hong Kong/Germany)
Motion creation, energy transmission, kinetic combustion.
AUDIENCE: 4:3 (Ross Hogg, UK)
Animated projections combine to develop a rhythmic dialogue exploring the intrinsic relationship between sound and image using 16mm film, paint and a projector.
Voting for Best International Competition Programme 2: From Absurd to Zany
JURY: I’m Going Out For Cigarettes (Osman Cerfon, France)
Jonathan, twelve years old, lives with his sister, his mother and also some men. They all have the same face and nest in closets, drawers, TV set.
AUDIENCE: Sh*t Happens (Michaela Mihályi & David Štumpf, Czech Republic/Slovakia/France)
An exhausted caretaker and his sexually frustrated wife, a widowed deer drowning his sorrows in loads of alcohol. An absurd triangle of events.
Voting for Best International Competition Programme 3: Playing with Emotion
JUDGES: Entropia (Flora Anna Buda, Hungary)
Three parallel universes, three girls living in different circumstances. A glitch in the system causes the universes to collapse.
AUDIENCE: Memorable (Bruno Collet, France)
Recently Louis, a painter, and his wife have been experiencing strange events. The world around them seems to be mutating – objects and people are losing their realism.
Voting for Best International Competition Programme 4: Being Human
JUDGES: The Flounder (Elizabeth Hobbs, UK)
One day a humble fisherman catches an enchanted fish. Can the fish help him and his wife improve their lot?
AUDIENCE: Five Minutes to Sea (Natalia Mirzoyan, Russia)
For this little girl, five minutes are an ocean of boredom that stretches on and on forever and ever.
Voting for Best International Competition Programme 5: Into the Dark
JUDGES: Nettle Head (Paul Cabon, France)
Bastien and his two buddies enter the forbidden zone. In the midst of ruins bathed in a toxic fog, something lies in wait.
AUDIENCE: Food Chain (Liis Kokk & Mari Kivi, Estonia)
On the one hand it’s dirty work and on the other hand gorgeous product. Eat up! Yum! Yum!
2018, 8min
Voting for Best International Competition Programme 6: Animated Documentaries
JUDGES: Bloomers (Samantha Moore, UK)
The story of a lingerie factory in Manchester. Workers recount the history of Headen & Quarmby, UK manufacturing, and traditions of making.
AUDIENCE: My Dad’s Name was Huw. He was an Alcoholic Poet. (Freddie Griffiths, UK)
An attempt to unravel the state of mind of the filmmakers late alcoholic father, through the poems he left behind.
Voting for Best International Competition Programme 7: Looking for Answers
JUDGES: Castle (Ryotaro Miyajima, Japan)
During the period of the ‘Provinces of War’ many lives were lost. A castle architect discovers the possible role of a tearoom as a place for warriors to regain humanity.
AUDIENCE: Muedra (Cesar Diaz Melendez, Spain)
Life can spring from anywhere, nature can behave strangely and days can last for minutes. Although everything is familiar to us, nothing is what it seems in this place.
Voting for Best International Competition Programme 8: Long Shorts
JUDGES: Acid Rain (Tomek Popakul, Poland)
A young female hitchhiker meets up with a drug dealer and they head off in his van on a drug-fuelled trip to nowhere in particular.
AUDIENCE: The Physics of Sorrow (Theodore Ushev, Canada)
A man sifts through memories from his youth in Bulgaria through his increasingly rootless adult years in Canada.
Audience Voting for Best British Showcase
Sent Away (Rosa Fisher, UK)
How to survive life in a boarding school.
Audience Voting for Best Children’s Film 0-7
The Pig on the Hill (Jamy Wheless & John Helms, USA)
When Pig’s free-spirited new neighbour Duck plunges himself into Pig’s quiet, orderly life, Pig learns that having friends is what he has been missing all along.
Audience Voting for Best Children’s Film 8+
Matches (Geza M. Toth, Hungary)
A lonely boy is playing with his colourful matchsticks. While he is talking about his dreams, fears and hopes, the matchsticks bring his visions to life.
