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Browse through the detailed list of the screening films of the 2nd Athens Short Film Festival edition and explore our diverse programme.
A Fine Stew
Easter Sunday. Catherine has cooked her stew, Manon is hungover, Jacques is late. Dad is getting married and Pierre is the one who has to announce it. It would be just a normal family meal … if there wasn't a dead cat in the freezer …
Marie Glichitch
A Nice Guy
When a typical twenty-year-old student who is considered a “nice guy” crosses his girlfriend’s personal boundaries, he must choose whether to face up to his actions or to deny the pain he has caused her so that he can preserve his self-image and social status.
Gemma Barendse, Joël van Dooren
A Sealed Idea
Athens, 2028. The "stability government" that was implemented 5 years ago in order to revive the economy, has transformed into a totalitarian regime. Two members of the resistance obtain a USB drive full of important information and become instantly a target.
Theo Panagopoulos
As I Watch You From Afar
Tel Aviv's Central Station, a young man is waiting for the bus alone at night. A series of absurd encounters will reflect his repressed past.
Omer Weiss
Barbara
A resilient 92-year-old widow reflects on the struggles and wisdom that come with aging while living alone in Chico, California.
John Charter
Béa
Seven-year-old Béa’s world changes as her young mother tries to reconnect with her estranged aunt in this love-letter to misunderstanding.
José Esteban Pavlovich Salido
Big Toast
Sexy, sexy food. Sleazy and vain Toast tries to win back an ex flame, the beautiful Egg, but the hideous Big Toast is now on the scene. It is time.
Sacha Beeley
Boy Nomad
BOY NOMAD follows a year in the life of 9-year old Janibek, who lives with his family in Mongolia’s Altai Mountains. His first love is racing horses, but this winter, his father will bring him on the toughest journey in a nomad’s life: the winter migration. When the film crew arrives, they discover the Altai is gripped by a “zhut”, a hard winter that blocks the passes and threatens to wipe out the family’s only possession: their animals.
Niobe Thompson
Bye Bye Virgins
Even though they don’t know each other very well, Inès (14) and Abdel (15) decide to have their « first time » together. The big day arrives and Inès is called to help out a neighbor to babysit her two kids Moussa (3) and Balla (5). Inès is determined to go through with their plan and asks Abdel to join her at her neighbor’s apartment. But the two children and their friends don’t stop to interrupt them in their pursuit. And so, they are forced to get to know each other in a different way…
Pierre Boulanger
Calling
A tragically violent incident shatters the relationship between a Mexican-American seamstress and her adult son, who suffers from intellectual disability.
Artemis Anastasiadou
Carl’s Motel
At the centre of Carl's Motel is a man in the midst of dealing with painful life choices and coming to terms with his own personal turmoil. The film is set over the course of 16 minutes in a motel room where Jack has called his wife to reveal that he is leaving her and their son for another woman. Afterward, with a sense of relief and hope he calls his girlfriend with the exciting news only to learn that she does not want to be with him. Devastated and alone his personal angst starts to unravel as a force larger then himself arrives at his door. This film is inspired by Sam Shepard's Coalinga 1/2 way
Stuart McIntyre
Chronosync
The story is based on observations on the changing worldview of mankind and shows the weird connection between different cultures through time and their worldview. All the scenes contain associations on myths, legends and scientific facts, which were in their time believed and known as reality. So the eternal urge to explain where we came from and how the universe works seems to be born with us. What is reality? Or is “reality” just as fragile and varies just as much as every individual’s own view of existence? And what if the whole existence isn’t “real” in the way we imagine it? These were the main background questions of the film. I collected these episodes of human history, which were inherited by all of us through collective knowledge and tried to convert them to an ongoing story, making it lifelike.
Sofia Laszlovszky
Cowboy
In a few days Minas is going to participate in the tv show Talent of the year. Minas must win to fulfill his dreams. What's his talent? He is a cowboy. in Athens. Cowboy is a mockumentary, where a tv crew follows 47 year old Minas in his everyday life interviewing him and his closest people until the big day of the show.
Ioannis Haritidis
Diva
Cries of ‘DIVA’ are known to ring out in the drag bar as well as the opera house. In this surreal queer fantasia on classical music, Baroque iconography, and scandalous first-century verse, drag prima donna Divina de Campo premieres an original operatic aria with chamber orchestra by composer V. R. Alevizos. Europe’s historic concert halls set the stage for an ecstatic meeting of two art traditions which traffic in extremes of gender performance, enacting a space where the drag bar diva and the opera house diva share the same skin.
Adam Csoka Keller
Entropia
Entopia is a container of three parallel universes where three girls are living in different circumstances. One of them represents the animalistic side of human nature, one of them is a consumer fulfilled with her own frustrations, and the third one is living in a futuristic room where she has to run to keep the system work. Suddenly a fly flews over the three universes and make a bug in the system. Because of that bug the three universes start collapsing and the girls are able to move towards each other.
Flóra Anna Buda
Flash
Flash is a New Orleans native who loves to dance. He's been through tough times but always comes out ahead – because of his passion and his talent.
James & James
Foreign Air -Free Animal
Daniel Geronimo Prochaska
Getting Ready For Being Late
Selim is a taxi driver who lives with his father. His car is old and dirty which causes problems with his customers. One day he finds out that people who take care of sick and elderly at home will be paid monthly and also get the opportunity to buy a car at a discounted price. However his father is not sick. Selim decides to try his luck to get his life back on track. He takes his father and heads to the hospital to look for an illness. All he wants is get married and live a stable life.
Aram Dildar
Homecoming
When a college sophomore returns home to share some important news with his parents, things don’t go exactly as he had expected… until they do.
Jennifer Blair
Laws of Motion
Two girls have created a world beyond time and space, dancing through the eery halls of an abandoned monastery. The games they play follow a dreamlike logic. Rules are randomly made, ultimately forming and breaking their symbiotic relationship.
Jeppe Lange
Nocturne for Pit Orchestra
‘Nocturne for Pit Orchestra’ is a film documenting the process of creation of a live performance conceived for The Bahrain National Quarry, involving the site’s laborers as performers. It is a project by visual artist Ilaria Lupo in collaboration with Lebanese composer and musician Rabih Beaini. The project digs into dynamics of music-making in the frame of labor while aiming to explore the intermingled layers connecting the quarry’s identity with the socio-economic shifts in 20th century Bahrain and the Gulf Region. The Fidjeri (pearl divers songs) embodies a pivotal history of migrant labor in the Gulf containing blends and fusions from the Levantine, Persian, East African and South Asian basins. The pearl divers traditionally performed publicly in the Dar music houses. The stone quarry is a landmark site which has witnessed the transition between two economic eras and the consequent changes in the system of labor. It came at a time of acceleration, accompanying the radical reconfiguration of the urban landscape. It is a site of Modernity while the project attempts to question this ‘modern’ identity and its ties with the past, still reverberating today. Beaini involved the site’s crew of laborers in a process where an array of influences were explored and combined. They rehearsed vocal droning, looping, amplifications, polyphonies, solo and choir. The final performance unfolded as a process navigating between dissonance and harmony. It took place at the quarry – still operating – opened to the public for the very first time.
Ilaria Lupo
On Air
Brian, who got stuck in a rut, receives a call during his broadcast that doesn't turn into a pleasant conversation.
Bastiaan Rook
Red Ink
A supermarket express line, at Christmas time. Everyone is tired and in a hurry. Convinced he's on a secret mission for Stalin, Gideon tries to purchase some biscuits for the dictator. As other harried shoppers delay Gideon from completing his important task, frustration turns to tragedy.
Alex Ryan
Royal Blue
On his way to take his daughter to gymnastics, a gambling addict stops at a betting shop, leaving the 9-year-old girl in the car. When he returns, he realizes nothing will ever be the same again.
Dinko Draganovic
Satán
Every day Tiago goes into his garden, to feed the crocodile that killed his brother.
Carlos Tapia
Schoolyard Blues
It's John's first day at school. Unexpectedly his eleven-year-old big brother Mika shows up to follow him to assembly. But Mika has plans other than just taking John to school. Mika sees it as his mission to teach John the hard facts of the world, starting with the merciless demands of the schoolyard.
Maria Eriksson-Hecht
Shmama
Leah works as a maid in the hotel during the day, while Meital, her daughter, sings at the hotel's lobby at night. They live trapped in their relationship, surrounded by the Dead Sea.
Miki Polonski
Skin
In the remote and wild north west of Scotland, A Fisherman lives a solitary existence. Driven by desperate loneliness the Fisherman commits an immoral act following the chance encounter with a mysterious Woman . In this rugged landscape the boundaries between folk lore and the harsh realities of highland existence are enigmatically blurred.
Alasdair K Boyce
Sombra City
In the year 2037, a corporate assassin revisits a city lost in time and the love he left behind.
Elias Plagianos
Soot
It’s like soot that rests on the walls of our head. We can’t see it. It belongs there already.
David Doutel, Vasco Sá
Tangles and Knots
A intimate bond between mother and daughter becomes threatened when the mother helps her teenage daughter throw a house party to impress new, more popular friends.
Renée Marie Petropoulos
The Prophetess
Set in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), The Prophetess follows the powerful friendship of two Congolese women who, despite having both been raped, are more than victims. Through their friendship, the two find the strength to support each other and heal one another. The Prophetess steps away from the traditional documentary towards an aesthetically driven narrative short, referencing the canon of Congolese mythology and evoking the story of Kimpa Vita, a woman of The Kingdom of the Kongo who rejected colonial rule and employed her vision to inspire. Together with Kimpa Vita, the protagonists and their community of powerful females step into a new future; a future inspired by their ancestors; a future where all generations of women join together to shape a different world. As the Congolese proverb goes: No matter how long the night, the day is sure to come.
Sylvie Weber
The Translator.
The Translator is the story of Jonathan Huang, a professional translator who excels at helping others communicate but lacks every social skill imaginable in his personal life. In fact, his most meaningful relationship is with his pet parrot, White. His latest project, being the on-set translator for a biscuit commercial, triggers a set of circumstances that will take Jonathan on a journey of self-discovery that culminates in him having to face, uncomfortably at times, what makes us truly human: the need to love and be loved.
Pagorn Jungrungruang
The Wind Phone
Inspired by true events, THE WIND PHONE intimately follows the emotional journeys of seven strangers. Each is drawn to the same remote and eerie phone booth on a Japanese cliffside, although their conversations couldn’t seem more different. Whereas one caller seeks forgiveness for a fatal transgression and another grapples with a twisted betrayal, others’ motivations are not clear at first. It is not until one of the callers extends a consoling hand to another, that we begin to understand that they are all connected by one harrowing reality.
Kristen Gerweck
When I Dance
Through the eyes of pre-teens Ella and Sylvester, two of the Royal Danish Ballet School's rising stars, we get an inside look at the world of ballet from a child's perspective. Their thoughtful words, devoted dance performances and imaginative illustrations open the door to this enchanted world.
Signe Roderik
Where Did Chen Guo Go?
After a construction site accident, the local labor contractor Wang Dashan meets a mysterious girl that keeps coming to his site.
Xiaoyu Fu
Where I Was Born
Sitting through insufferable rush hour traffic. People smoking in public places. Enduring pain by waxing our legs and putting on facial masks to take care of our beauty. Required company staff gatherings after work. Being pressured to drink more alcohol. People jumping in front of cars and feigning injuries for money. Hiding cameras around a public restroom and uploading the photos to the worldwide web. Random, unprovoked violence by drunk people. Through these short, humorous vignettes, one presents a critique of the diverse social issues permeating throughout South Korean culture.
Jungmin Cha
Who You Are
The accidental invention of an asshole AI spells trouble for a tech startup in the late 80’s. While trying to construct a machine capable of providing the world’s most accurate personality quiz, three computer engineers in a small garage in Silicon Valley accidentally stumble upon a full-fledged artificial intelligence that can read souls. The rise and fall of their company, the Mundi Corporation, is told over the course of five episodes.
Joel Jay Blacker
Whoever Was Using This Bed
A married couple is woken in the dead of night by a mysterious phone call. Unable to sleep, they are drawn into an unsettling examination of their fears and desires. Based on a story by Raymond Carver (Birdman), WHOEVER WAS USING THIS BED is a multi-award winning short psychological drama starring Jean-Marc Barr (The Big Blue), Radha Mitchell (Man on Fire) and Jane Birkin (Blow Up).
Andrew Kotatko