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Browse through the detailed list of the screening films of the 1st Athens Short Film Festival edition and explore our diverse programme.
Abandoned Land
”Abandoned Land” is a documentary and experimental video. It captures and documents abandoned places, infrastructure and phenomenon in Finland. The video uses Finland as an allegory to approach recent changes of the European society with visually effective images, prosaic narration and music. When still in use, the abandoned environment had grown to match to the demands of society and now time has made it useless. The video observes and documents that change. With the abandoned phenomena the video explores history and its relation with today.
Simo Saarikoski
Apex
“Emergence of a hybrid human-alien consciousness from the void” APEX explores the emergence of a higher life form, the convergence of intelligence and higher consciousness in the primordial void of infinite potential. A portal through which something greater and far more malevolent has emerged. This conceptual film was inspired by a love of the ‘Alien’ franchise and the work of H.R Giger. I wanted to explore the Alien concept set in a future abstraction. We witness a genetic hybrid emerging from the void, composed of the alien and human DNA. The creature: a biological zenith represents the pinnacle in biological evolution and higher consciousness, the being represents balance, a queen and creator, the APEX of being. I employed symbolism to build a subtext, using light (illumination) that symbolises the beginning or awareness or consciousness, the cube (structure) that represents the totality of human intelligence, alongside the blackness in both liquid and solid form to represent the void.
Stuart T Birchall
Casual
Maura, an aspiring poet, has been dumped in a voice mail. It was only a casual thing, but she's still stuck with those grim feelings that come with rejection: self loathing, anger, resentment and an insatiable hunger for chocolate mousse. And bacon. And wine. To get out of this funk, she decides to take control. Her mate thinks she's a dope, but Maura's sure she'll win the guy over.
Aoife Nic Ardghail, Kate Dolan
Celebrate Eileen!
Trapped in the wrong body, Eileen wants to finally start living her life as a girl tomorrow. But today her best friend Ella throws a good-bye party for Eileen's old self Leon. The party turns into desaster when no one shows up. The two friends decide to confront the guests who didn't show and dive into an absurd odyssey thru town that changes everything.
Judith Westermann
City of my Heart
A personal glimpse into Madrid, an experimental urban cityscape, an ode to life through a dance.
Kostas Petsas
Clayton’s Last Breath
Clayton is keeping himself alive with a machine, so that his baby, can grow up and take care of itself. One day, Clayton is forced to leave his vital machine.
Simon Reinhardt
Death Of Albine
‘Death of Albine’ is a collaborative film project between award-winning film director Mike Sharpe and British Installation Artist Rebecca Louise Law, inspired by elements of the French novel ‘The Sinful Priest’, by Emile Zola. The music and sound design for the film was created by Echoic Audio in Bristol. The music starts slowly with mournful tones and builds into more music realms and finally thrusting into a full orchestral string score. The slow build to this moment was intentional. As the character's central motive is death we wanted to create a sense of transition and also elation at this beautiful moment.
Mike Sharpe
Dry Land
A little girl lives with her mother, father, and grandfather in a beautiful village in Iran. The village and the farms are dependent on water and rain to survive. This little girl finds her own way to help her family. Dry land is a poetic short story about the dream, fantasy and the power of imagination in children.
Farima Piroozpay
Ginger
24 hours in Salar de Uyuni: A man, all alone by himself. Not a single soul around. He wants to be alone, with his thoughts. Just him, his mind and a surreal environment. Until another human being breaks the silence and interrupts this chosen loneliness. Is there an option to gain back his inner freedom? Should he leave? Or is his freedom not really freeing him?
Markus Stoll
Give Me Your Hand
A young girl who has to deal with the upcoming loss of her mother, goes through her mother's sinking body.
Yael Messing
hashtagwill
15 year old William doesn’t feel much support from his friends when he tries to fight against harassments and bullying around him. Like many video bloggers, he suffers from hatred, but he also has the battle against his own demons to deal with. One weekend he gets permission to use the school auditorium alone to record a video but strange events start to occur. Someone is also threatening him…
Per Sundström
Holiday Hostage
It’s Thanksgiving night and siblings Abby and David just want to quickly eat their turkey and ditch their overbearing “still has their umbilical cords” Jewish mother. Before they can make their getaway, Gary, a deranged ex-convict, breaks in and takes the family hostage. Tensions are high, family secrets are revealed, and Gary’s getting so annoyed he’s starting to regret this. At least Grandma is here to calm the family down. Just kidding, she’s batshit crazy. Can this dysfunctional family make peace with one another before they’re offed? Oy vey!
D.W. Moffett
John Hemmer & the Showgirls
JOHN HEMMER & THE SHOWGIRLS takes a behind-the-scenes peek inside Lou Walters’ famed Latin Quarter nightclub in New York City. In this intimate portrait, a one-time entertainer reflects on the heyday of America’s nightclub era with his band of showgirls and performers as they share histories and consider the rigors and rewards of growing older. Despite life’s challenges, Hemmer, along with his showgirls, resurrect the Latin Quarter’s legacy and discover a new purpose along the way.
Kirsten Larvick
Kids of Chaos
Girl athletes from the Down Syndrome Association of Greece, recreate through movement a sort of a Big Bang, dispersing into space they eventually come together to form a planetary system. Their perpetual motion/dance gives birth to IOTAPHI, the band.
Gregoris Rentis
Lessons From a School Shooting: Notes from Dunblane
Following the Sandy Hook Massacre, a priest from Dunblane, Scotland reaches out to Father Bob offering support 16 years after a school shooting in his own town. The men bond over personal trauma and responsibilities … In the aftermath the UK reformed its gun laws; the US responded with inaction.
Kim A. Snyder
Level 4
Two first-time criminals find themselves out of luck when their getaway vehicle is clamped up in a multi-storey car park.
Charles Copsey
Remission
Inspired by co-creator of the film Artist Paul Kaiser’s struggle with PTSD and his real life mission to reconnect with his daughters, three creatures are manifestations of an unknown soldier’s war trauma and his vast, lonely pilgrimage toward emerging from a purgatory loop. The film features vibrant handmade creature costumes and breathtaking visuals of the Southern California landscape; from Death Valley to Sequoia, each shot is carefully composed as if a painting.
John Charter
Shalim Goodbye
In order not to win it to his son who considers him a solitary scurvy, an old man from the Romagna country assumes a Moroccan Shalim as worker.
Jacopo Manzari
Sheila’s Boy
Through a series of lo-fi flashbacks, a young man reflects on a past relationship while driving around his hometown. Features original music by Milwaukee-based R&B artist, Maajei Vu.
Henry Willette
The Oak Tree
In a peaceful village in the mountains of Lebanon, an old man named Fadel, makes a living from crafting canes for the elderly villagers. After a client places an order to him, Fadel heads to the forest to look for the right branch and finds the perfect one on an isolated oak tree. However, the branch is not tall enough, and still needs to grow. Given that, Fadel marks the tree by attaching a green scarf to it and decides to come back later. A few weeks go by, and Fadel comes back to cut the branch. However, as he arrives in front of the oak tree, he discovers that it has turned into a religious shrine for the villagers seeking its blessing. Although intrigued and confused, Fadel remains determined to cut the branch and deliver the cane to his client. Will he be able to get his branch or will the villagers stand in his way ?
Ethan Jahan
The Road to Nickelsville
Caution, survival, and hope. The residents of Nickelsville, an organized homeless encampment in Seattle Washington, share how they became homeless; caution how quickly it can happen, and how they persevere. Director of the Low Income Housing Institute, and a district court judge who presides over child custody cases involving homeless families, provide institutional context.
Derek McNeill
The Sky Underwater
It’s 2050. Six years old Mia lives in the city of Bergen, under a glass dome, 537 meters under the sea level. Every night, the Big Light wakes her up, clean and beautiful, unlike the rest of the world underwater, which is full of trash. Mia wants to travel out of the dome to see the Big Light, but the Adults hold her back and tell her everything is dangerous out there, because it’s full of sharks. Mia escapes anyway, and finds out that neither the sharks nor the world outside the dome are as dangerous as the fearful Adults want her to believe. Gathering the trash around her with the help of her friends, she will fly up to the surface to see the Moon for the first time.
Maria Galliani Dyrvik
The Soil
A family has left everything to return to the mountains, to find peace. The father explains to his children how their life was. But have they actually lived it?
Thanassis Fouradoulas
The Son, the Father…
The events on a young boy's birthday have twisted consequences far into his future.
Lukas Hassel
The Ticket
We follow the course of a ticket for Public Transportation as it passes from hand to hand. Each person that holds the ticket carries his own story and a social problem as well. A social recording of the Greek crisis.
Haris Stathopoulos
The Wire
In many languages, to see means to understand. As in seeing that humanity begins where the obsession with comfort ends. In The Wire, artists from various forms identify with refugees. They also want their audience to open their eyes, to throw out fear and begin seeing!
Milica Spasojevic
Wishful Thinking
Time disappears when you dream, you feel like you’ve been in your fantasy world for hours, but reality toke only a couple of minutes. Imagine that after your final breath, you glide in your final dream and you biggest wish becomes true. And that dream lasts forever. What would your dream be? Did you ever think about that? The old Walter did, he knows very wel. He cherished his dream since 1961. This film worshipper and owner of his own old-fashioned filmtheater urges for decades after that one meeting, that one caress, huge, kiss and sleep… with the unreachable love of his live: Marilyn Monroe. One night his heart gives up, shall his dearest wish become true?
Dennis Nap