Category: BEST SHORT FILM – 2024 ARFF BERLIN

(FINALIST)

Original Film Title: Flying Low

Director’s Name: Xiong Wei

Writer’s Name: Xiong Wei

Producer: Qiu Jia Qiu

Country of Origin: China

Country of Filming: China

Language: Chinese

Runtime: 29 minutes 30 seconds

Film Description:

Tianyu, a 13-year-old middle school boy from a poor family, was raised by his father alone. Even though Tianyu still had a chance to be admitted despite his hard work, he gave up the high school entrance examination together with a girl he had a good relationship within the class. But on the day of the high school entrance examination, Tianyu found that the result was not what he expected…

Later, Tianyu followed his father to Dongguan, the most developed coastal area and the most factories in China, because his father thought that there might be more job opportunities there.

Tianyu’s father did not want Tianyu to enter society too early, so he spent a lot of savings on Tianyu to choose a good local vocational school that did not require high school examination results. He hoped that he could continue to study there and have a better future way out.

Soon, the second school year was coming to an end, and Tianyu didn’t know whether he would spend more money to enter the college entrance examination class, or he would participate in a corporate internship stipulated by the state and enter a factory arranged by the school.

However, Tianyu also learned that even if his father was willing to pay more to allow him to enter the college entrance examination class, he would not be able to take the spring college entrance examination in this city in the first place because of his father…

(WINNER)

Original Film Title: Heartificial

Director’s Name: Paul Weiss

Writer’s Name: Paul Weiss, Jan Knarr

Producer: Paul Weiss, Jan Knarr, Ian Lawrence

Country of Origin: Germany

Country of Filming: Germany

Language: German

Runtime: 20 minutes

Film Description:

After collapsing while working two jobs in a grim future, Stim Mits is told that he‘s fatally ill. Desperate, he agrees to what sounds like a clinical trial— only to be held captive and become part of a gruesome, life-altering science experiment. After discovering a surprising power and an unusual new friend, he escapes and revenge is inevitable.

(HONORABLE MENTION)

Original Film Title: Baron Munchausen (Karl)

Director’s Name: Ilya Noyabrev

Writer’s Name: Semen Khanin

Producer: Semen Khanin

Country of Origin: Ukraine

Country of Filming: Ukraine

Language: Russian

Runtime: 19 minutes 37 seconds

Film Description:

Eternal love or eternal life? This difficult choice is facing a brilliant actor. His life in the gray real world and the life of the world of fantasies are so closely intertwined that bright pictures of visions in his imagination layered on each other, mixing and breaking into small fragments fold again into the incredible patterns of a magic kaleidoscope …

(FINALIST)

Original Film Title: YOU ARE SPECIAL

Director’s Name: Ilya Noyabrev

Writer’s Name: Semen Khanin

Producer: Semen Khanin

Country of Origin: Ukraine

Country of Filming: Ukraine

Language: Ukrainian

Runtime: 17 minutes 38 seconds

Film Description:

A little boy, fascinated by the legend that the white keys on the old Steinway piano, which “lives” in his parents’ house, are made of elephant tusks, dreams every night of meeting the gray giants one day and never being separated from them…This desire grows from day to day along with the lullaby that his mother sings to him, because there are words in it: “You are special!”

The fate of the hero of the film turned out to be such that his life turned out to be full of hopes and disappointments…

He is not old yet, but the meaning of life gradually fades into the distance and loneliness becomes a sad reality…

The only “friend” who never cheated on him, an ancient instrument – the keeper of the white keys, and the memory of the “gray giants”, still lives in his house…

Who will Steinway get to when he is gone?

And one day everything changes: the hero accidentally enters a small bar to drink the usual glass of absinthe, and pays attention to the lack of music. He offers the bartender an adventurous venture, he agrees, and the very next day the antique instrument moves to the bar.

Now every evening our hero plays for visitors trying to fill his life with meaning and desires again. One evening, he remembers his mother, her lullaby, and his fingers begin to play familiar chords themselves…

Suddenly, a young woman appears from the semi–darkness of the hall, sits down next to him and … his mother’s song with the words “You are special” bursts into his tired heart, bringing with it both pain and comfort…

Life is slowly fading away, but now he knows exactly to whom he leaves “his elephants” and his Steinway…

(FINALIST)

Original Film Title: ASHWATH

Director’s Name: Tanima Das Roy, Shantanu Roy

Writer’s Name: Santanu Roy

Producer: Dipankar Karmakar

Country of Origin: India

Country of Filming: India

Language: Hindi

Runtime: 34 minutes 12 seconds

Film Description:

Love’s dangerously potent (in either ways). How far can we go if jilted in love ? As that fateful evening unravels, lines between love, vengeance, redemption blur, leading to a dramatic climax where trust is shattered , truths laid bare.

(FINALIST)

Original Film Title: 那夜，我在回家的路上撞見一群黑色咚咚

Director’s Name: Ho Sin I

Writer’s Name: Ho Sin I

Producer: Guo Xiao Nan

Country of Origin: China

Country of Filming: China

Language: Yue Chinese (Cantonese)

Runtime: 29 minutes 8 seconds

Film Description:

Ah Ming’s travel agency is facing a crisis of bankruptcy. One day, Ah Ming met a group of mysterious men in black on the road. He decided to use the popularity of those men in black to create a tourist attraction. In the end, he got closer and closer to the truth.

(HONORABLE MENTION)

Original Film Title: The Alert

Director’s Name: Pascal Gonçalves

Writer’s Name: Estelle Gonçalves

Producer: Pascal Gonçalves, Manuel Gonçalves, Estelle Gonçalves

Country of Origin: France

Country of Filming: France

Language: French

Runtime: 11 minutes 50 seconds

Film Description:

After a journalist receives dangerous political information from a co-worker, he faces a tough decision: broadcast it or run for his life.

(HONORABLE MENTION)

Original Film Title: Envy

Director’s Name: Luka Radulović

Writer’s Name: Britt Levin-Clarke

Producer: Britt Levin-Clarke, Liya Shay

Country of Origin: Monaco

Country of Filming: France, Monaco

Language: French

Runtime: 15 minutes

Film Description:

An investigative journalist inadvertently ends up in a small town where a girl has gone missing. While unravelling the threads of the case, she encounters a mysterious family and shocking secrets that intertwine with her own past.

(FINALIST)

Original Film Title: The Demo Reel

Director’s Name: Won Joon Yoon

Writer’s Name: Won Joon Yoon

Producer: Dong Hun Han

Country of Origin: Korea, Republic of

Country of Filming: Korea, Republic of

Language: Korean

Runtime: 30 minutes 37 seconds

Film Description:

Three acting students are fighting hard to get casted. It is about the road they are on, and it is their Demo Reel.

(HONORABLE MENTION)

Original Film Title: Broono

Director’s Name: Gerald Lepkowski

Writer’s Name: Gerald Lepkowski

Producer: Paul Harry Thomas, Dave Gillies, Joanne Williamson

Country of Origin: United Kingdom

Country of Filming: United Kingdom

Language: English

Runtime: 21 minutes 35 seconds

Film Description:

In 1970s Glasgow, an unlikely friendship develops between a bereaved 11-year-old lad and the local bully until tragedy strikes again.