Category: BEST DIRECTOR ARFF Paris 2023

Original Film Title: Tummyache

Director’s Name: Sasha Dulerayn

Writer’s Name: Sasha Dulerayn

Producer: Sasha Dulerayn

Country of Origin: United Kingdom

Country of Filming: United Kingdom

Language: English

Runtime: 1 hour 27 minutes

Film Description:

Misha is a recently-sober former child star living in London with his drug dealer half-sister Kate. Theodore is the youngest son of Italian prince/oligarch Santino Marquestino. After auditioning for an experimental theatre production of the Bacchae, directed by Polish immigrant Agnieszka Bezuidenhout, the two boys fall in love. Political intrigues, drug-fuelled violence and disorder unfold within London’s young elite as the myth of Dionysus irreversibly transforms their lives.

Original Film Title: Lost Cos

Director’s Name: Robin de Levita

Writer’s Name: Robin de Levita

Producer: Catriona Rubenis-Stevens, Evgeniya Radilova, Stevan Keane, Jeffrey Smith Georges, Michael Tosner

Country of Origin: United States

Language: English

Runtime: 1 hour 28 minutes

Film Description:

Haunted by her tortured childhood and the violent loss of the great love of her life, troubled dental assistant Eni finds escape in Los Cos, a mysterious underground club where cosplay and burlesque intertwine and heroes and villains blur the line between fantasy and reality. But when a cosplayer dressed as “Merman” shows up dead on a New Jersey beach and a mysterious stalker gets up in her DMs, Eni must confront the traumas that have shaped her life and transform herself into an altogether more formidable force.

Original Film Title: Y si no, estamos perdidos.

Director’s Name: Giulio Franz

Writer’s Name: Giulio Franz

Producer: Giulio Franz, Jonathan Garnica

Country of Origin: Mexico

Country of Filming: Mexico

Language: Spanish

Runtime: 16 minutes 19 seconds

Film Description:

Lalo and Sebastien are a married couple from oposite worlds who, not sharing the same language have found their own. A language made by silent glimpses, encounters and body collisions, discrete gestures of atention, love, deception and rage. Their missunderstandings take them to a violent argue, but there’s something beautiful that pushes both of them to keep dialogue open.

Original Film Title: MINGMING

Director’s Name: 荣欣 张

Writer’s Name: 荣欣 张

Producer: 剑莹 陈

Country of Origin: China

Country of Filming: China

Language: Chinese

Runtime: 21 minutes 56 seconds

Original Film Title: Les deux frères et le Père Noël

Director’s Name: Gabriel Tibi

Writer’s Name: Morgan Cini, Gabriel Tibi

Producer: Gabriel Tibi

Country of Origin: France

Country of Filming: France

Language: French

Runtime: 20 minutes

Film Description:

As Christmas Eve approaches, Léo, a naïve 7-year-old kid, searches for evidence to prove that Santa Claus really exists.
His older brother, Kevin, tries to prove him wrong.

Original Film Title: Uprooted

Director’s Name: Andzej Gavriss

Writer’s Name: Andzej Gavriss, Konstantin Koval, Rick Dodds

Producer: Blake Powell, Thomas Bartl, Marc Haferbusch

Country of Origin: Ukraine

Country of Filming: Germany

Language: English, Ukrainian

Runtime: 2 minutes 40 seconds

Film Description:

Displacement crisis has reached 100 million people globally. 60+ Ukrainian refugees were involved in making the film, sending a message of support to all refugees. The film focuses on the PTSD that people experience after fleeing the war.