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Discover the award-winning films of the 2nd Athens Short Film Festival’s 9 competition categories and learn more about all the inspiring filmmakers we featured this year.
Best Animation Winner
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
Best Comedy Winner
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
Best Documentary Winner
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
Best Drama Winner
Calling
A tragically violent incident shatters the relationship between a Mexican-American seamstress and her adult son, who suffers from intellectual disability.
Artemis Anastasiadou
Best Experimental Winner
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
Best Music Score Winner
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
Best Short Film Winner
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
Best Writing Winner
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