Discover the winners of this year’s Athens Short Film Festival! Congratulations to all directors and a bit thank you to everyone who joined us at the ASFF23!
Best Animation Winner
Homeward Journey
Chen Yingyings career on Mars is taking off but she hasn’t returned home in a long time. When her granny falls gravely ill, she takes the arduous journey back to Earth to be reunited with her family.
Youyang Kong
Best Comedy Winner
U.N. Slap Commission
A positive conspiracy theory about the UNs greatest secret. When diplomacy fails, the UN Slap Commission comes in. Their duty: Keeping politicians in check – by delivering a hard slap in the face. This mockumentary follows slap bureaucrat Joschka Grimm and his colleagues as they offer first-time insights into the art of slapping and the science behind it. We will witness how they slap world leaders like Trump, Merkel and Obama and change the course of history – one slap at a time.
Valentin Burkhardt, Stephan Kämpf
Best Documentary Winner
The Doll
After consulting with his relatives a 35-year-old father consents to the marriage of his 14-year-old daughter. As individuals with differing perspectives his family grapple with the decision.
Elahe Esmaili
Best Drama Winner
Original Skin
In an alternate world where having sex means swapping bodies with the other person, a young woman struggles to be herself, defying her small conservative community where swapping is taboo. A deeply intimate portrait of identity in transition.
Mdhamiri á Nkemi
Best Experimental Winner
Stratis
On the most isolated island of the Aegean Sea, a man faces a series of paradoxical challenges struggling to survive in exile.
Antonis Maros
Best Music Video Winner
Ma Fatsh Leah
One voice, one piano is all that minimalist French outfit Madeleine & Salomon need to create their hypnotic version of MA FATSH LEAH, the single from their second album, Eastern Spring, which covers a choice selection from the repertoire of ‘60s/’70s Mediterranean folk-pop. Clotilde’s melancholic voice tells of a young woman tortured by the interminable wait for her lover in the emancipated Cairo of the 1970s, while the bewitching piano of Alexandre Saada conjures the buzz of a restless city that feeds the sweet madness of her hope, and ours with it. As soon as we have reached the end of this interior journey, we have but one desire: to start all over again.
Marion Auvin
Best Short Film Winner
Sheets
A family surviving in a totalitarian dystopia is faced with the dilemma of reporting a family of immigrants who suddenly their seek help or preserve human dignity by endangering their own safety.
Evi Gjoni