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Browse through the detailed list of the screening films of the 5th Athens Short Film Festival edition and explore our diverse programme.
August Sky
As the Amazon burns for the seventeenth day, a nurse in Sao Paulo finds herself drawn to a neo-Pentecostal church.
Jasmin Tenucci
Boys
Two boys let their imagination run wild in a barren desert, but the fun and games come to a shocking halt.
Luke Benward
Catch
The short film Catch is a poetic drama about a child's longing for a family. In search of a father figure, the girl takes refuge in a hunting lodge where she chooses a man for her mother. She lures him into her home, which soon after becomes his cage. The hunter becomes the prey, and the child takes the reins into his own hands until the mother returns home. The film illustrates a child’s view of the adult world in an insightful and lucid way.
Ana Gruden
Cruise
We’ve all received scam phone calls, but what about the person making the calls? Cruise is a dark workplace satire about a hapless telemarketer trying mightily to give away a free cruise. And if he fails, there will be dire consequences.
Sam Rudykoff
Dajla: Cinema and Oblivion
Life is going on in Dakhla, one of the Sahrawi refugee camps in southern Algeria, forgotten for 45 years. The celebration of a film festival, the Fisahara, breaks the monotony. The event ends, life (and oblivion) continues.
Arturo Dueñas Herrero
Death and Magic Castles
On a beautiful, sunny day five year old Zizou fell to the ground and died when his heart suddenly stopped. In that moment of losing my son I was thrown into the cold reality of America’s complicated relationship with death. Through animation, "Death and Magic Castles" explores traditions of mourning and loss in different cultures and follows my quest to bring death and life closer together in a culture where mourning is taboo and the goal is to live forever.
Kari Barber
Elevator Alone
Four people and the time they spend in an elevator. Inspired by everyday life and by the difference in people's behavior when they are alone, in contrast to the socially acceptable behavior that individuals adopt when in public space and especially in the confined and always awkward setting of an elevator.
Anastasia Papadopoulou
Enthusiasts of Utopia
"Enthusiasts of Utopia" is an animated short film set in a post-environmental crisis setting, mixing Utopia and Dystopia. The character Dani lives her routine and “quiet” life when she happens to find a goal that can change her life and that of all humanity. But the character must make tough choices along the way. Screenplay and direction by Fernanda Sartori and Lara Ferreira and animation and production by Daniela Mendes, this is the first project of young Brazilian activists.
Fernanda Mendes Sartori, Lara Gonçalves Ferreira
Georgia
-Based on a true story- When the police refuse to investigate their daughter’s alleged suicide, two computer-illiterate parents decide to design a protest banner. Based on the infamous Miryang case in South Korea which shocked the nation in 2004 and continues to fuel public outrage even today.
Jayil Pak
Girlhood
Three teenage girls find refuge in their friendship as they struggle with gender expectations, eating disorders and an addiction to social media amid a long, emotionally stifling quarantine in Greece. "Girlhood" follows Vera, Christina and Nefeli, three seventeen-year-old girls in Athens who come of age during the pandemic. From the first frame, we’re invited into their worlds as they talk about their frustrations and dreams. These intimate, sometimes painful conversations are threaded with the Instagram, YouTube and TikTok videos shaping their self-image in quarantine. Tough, responsible, and mature beyond her years, Christina shares a room with her brother, helps her mother with the housework, and yearns more than anything to leave home and gain her independence. Brave Vera is insecure about her weight and longs for acceptance, while also yearning for a more inclusive world. And strong-willed Nefeli, a competitive dancer, discovers feminism and stops hanging out with boys. This coming-of-age story shows teenage girls trying to figure out how to love themselves as they transition from girls to women in a society that remains deeply patriarchal. Even as their faces are glued to a screen during quarantine, they find refuge in their friendship as they finish school and begin the road to adulthood.
Vania Turner, Maria Sidiropoulou
Go Lesson
Two kids in go class became friends because they both suffered from school bullying. However, their friendship facing challenge due to the selection day's coming…..
Xue Li Ming
HEX – Try
Christos Tsounis
How I Beat Glue and Bronze
Following the daily life of a factory worker Mihajlo in a neglected industrial town, testimonies about his life are given by people from his closest surrounding. At times, these people are seen as part of Mihajlo's daily routine, but after the character leaves the stage, their voices remain as the voice of the narrator. What they don't know is that Mihajlo is obsessively stealing tools from the factory and suffering from lost love. What they can't anticipate is what one morning is going to happen.
Vladimir Vulević
Important Things Don’t Matter
Documentary made for more than five years in numerous countries in Africa and Europe, to photograph and film through encounters with people and places that suffer the consequences of human actions. An intimate trip, a walk through this ephemeral life where the author pretends to be another neighbor, regardless of where he is, with phrases that were written during the coexistence, to unite words and images in a single feeling, without prejudice, avoiding the word injustice to suggest questions we can ask ourselves. An invitation to the viewer to put his own voice on this long journey full of life, to discover the relationship between North and South. The documentary shares a book published months before that could be considered as its own script and, on its first page it says: a book with more questions than answers.
Gabriel Tizón
La Recette de Muriel
A recipe for revenge that you have to stir up yourself! How does a lonely young girl deal with excruciating hunger, her own desire, and a persistent Mr. Freud? Postmodern food porn images combine seemingly incompatible genre escapades into a visual poem full of irony and ambiguity.
Filip Racek
Men In Sync
Artistic swimming, formerly known as synchronised swimming, is an Olympic sport since the games in Los Angeles 1984. It has however been a female-only discipline till today. In 2015, male artistic swimmers were for the first time allowed to compete at the official World and European Championships, in a mixed event called mixed duet. Despite this, men are still banned from Olympic competition in artistic swimming. Men In Sync is a Swedish-British short documentary exploring the gender inequality men are facing in the sport, with intimate interviews with the Spanish national team mixed duet Pau Ribes and Emma Garcia, as well as former team USA artistic swimmer Bill May. They share their experiences as a male artistic swimmer from childhood, to reaching the world elite.
Parmida Hamdollazadehkive
Mirage
1917, on the desert battlefront of a war for resources, Marcel is assigned a crucial message for the french trenches.
Arthur Fanget
No One Makes A Sound
Due to the events that took place in Nea Smyrni, Athens and in Greece in general , This Short Music Video Film exposes the police brutality, the misinformation of the media and the propaganda of our Government that makes everyone numb.
Kyriakos Gkalanakis
Nsenene
Masaka's grasshopper catchers light up the sky in this poetic portrayal of a Ugandan tradition
Michelle Coomber
NYC! Sound (Back) On
Celebrate New York's reopening with this audio-visual homage to the greatest city in the world. 900+ sounds sampled. 6 days of shooting. Countless days of editing. As New Yorkers eagerly await a full reopening, the Bonamaze directing duo celebrates the spirit of the city with the release of their new short, “NYC! Sound (back) On.” The goal of this creative, audio-visual homage is to capture the heartbeat of the Big Apple like never before, with a special emphasis on sound that brings the city’s diverse culture to vibrant life. Selected as Vimeo Staff Pick – Best of the Month and winner of Best Unscripted and Best Use of Sound & Music at Berlin Commercial 2021.
Gilad Avnat, Stav Nahum
Our Land’
‘Our Land’ is the story of Britain’s black farmers, food growers and activists who are shaking up the system; carving their own path in the predominantly white agricultural industry.
Alexandra Genova
Paraclete
Ricardo is set to play Jesus in a small town biblical reenactment. While he is crossing the countryside to make it on time he’ll crash upon a dilemma.
Matias Maumus, Tomas Maumus
Piglet Piglet
Leading up to the 2020 Taiwanese presidential election, a pivotal moment for a young democracy, Yu-Ann discovers that she is eight weeks pregnant — news she decides to keep to herself, given her husband’s preoccupation with opening a Ba-Wan (dumpling) store. Before Yu-Ann can find the right moment to tell her husband about the pregnancy, she unexpectedly suffers a miscarriage. Devastated, Yu-Ann is comforted by her partner, leaving both to wrestle with the inherent unpredictability of the future.
Lin Tsung-Yen
Pops
How would you react if your father's last wish was to send his ashes to a – very – eccentric place? For siblings Roz and Elli, there is no consensus on the answer.
Lewis Rose
Primal Therapy
A middle-aged man on the verge of a burnout seeks new energy through a very special form of self help therapy.
Santtu Salminen
Santiago
A film about the friendship between a child and an old fisherman. The story is inspired by Hemingway’s ‘The Old Man and the Sea’
Andrey Koulev
Shark
Completing the trilogy of wickedly dark comedy shorts that began with Spider and Bear, Nash Edgerton finds a perfect match in Rose Byrne as Sofie, a woman who loves pranks just as much as Jack, Edgerton’s onscreen alter ego. Alas, the couple’s quest to outdo each other may lead to the most outrageous calamity of all.
Nash Edgerton
Snorrie (Mustachio)
Absurd tragicomedy about thirty-something Freek, who is reuniting with his imaginary friend from the past, who is looking for closure.
Victoria Warmerdam
Stolen Kisses
Sometimes there are advantages to your granny going senile. This makes it easy for Amy to win at cards or get paid twice for her report, which is convenient because she is saving up for a skateboard. Yet she really loves her grandma and is super happy that gran has fallen in love with Rinus, who also lives at the nursing home. One day Rinus is moved to another home and Amy decides to do anything she can to help the couple see each other again. Stolen Kisses is based on the true story of filmmaker Lidi Toepoel’s aged grandmother Mientje, who lived in a nursing home with dementia and had a boyfriend there. The film shows what dementia does to people, their friends and family using a delicate touch, and underscores how elderly people with Alzheimer’s are often unfairly dismissed.
Lidi Toepoel
Stop It
It’s a normal day of a normal family in this normal, repetitive, boring pandemic time, while objects take revenge as a consequence of their overconsumption…We're gonna stop it right now!
Lingxi Zhang, Tom Chegaray
The Big Tomato
This film is an experimental documentary exploring the directors memories and Astoria before and during the corona virus. The main character is a 73 year old man named Iason. Iason has experienced a painful past, and he is trying to connect his life with the one that Jason from Greek mythology had. Just like Iason, Astoria acts in the same way. It tries to tie herself to the city of Athens and to the Ancient Greek world.
Christos Adrianopoulos
The Cookie Cutter
With bathing suit season just around the corner, Stevie needs to put their sweet-tooth for cookies in check! But when an ambitious Cookie Scout darkens their doorway, dead-set on the sale, it becomes the ultimate battle of the bulge!
David Rocco Facchini
The Last Supper
In the tiny castle town of Berat, Albania, each family is bustling in preparation for a grand turkey feast for tonight's New Year's celebration. A sensitive and restless young boy, overlooked by his parents and rejected by his schoolyard peers, finds himself on an adventure of a lifetime when he accidentally lets the wily family turkey – tonight's main course – escape the pen, leading to a thrilling chase throughout the labyrinthine cobblestone fortress, which will take both adversaries to their wits' end. With every epic twist and turn, the question remains: Who will prevail: boy or bird?
Michael Risley
The Saverini Widow
Bonifacio 1883, extreme south of Corsica. The widow of the late Saverini lives in an isolated house near the cliffs, with her only son Antoine, and her dog. During the day, she assists women giving birth in town. One night her son is killed in a clash. The murderer flees to Sardinia. Her world falls to pieces…
Loïc Gaillard
Trumpets in the Sky
Boushra, one of the Syrian potato-picking girls in Lebanon, returns from a long day of work in the field only to learn that today her childhood will come to an end.
Rakan Mayasi
Try To
John finds himself alone in a sterile, empty world. At first he cannot move, but after breaking his stupor, John is able to explore his surroundings. Step by step his aching body stumbles through a world that is definitely trying to tell him something. But to figure out what brought him here, John has to listen to the clues, accept the past, fight a seemingly endless fight through pain and sorrow and finally find an exit out of this lonely, bleak void that is of his own making.
Luca Werner-Tutschku
Vlada Goes to London
Vlada is a pizza delivery girl who lives in Haifa and dreams of becoming a famous DJ. Within a five-hour shift, we get a glimpse into her world full of pressure where she's willing to do whatever it takes to find the money for a flight to perform at a festival in London.
Arti Savchenko
Zawal
Eight year-old Adam confronts a mutated world, when he breaks out of the designated quarantine area for refugees.
Mujtaba Saeed