“Unspoken,” “Genealogy of Violence,” and “Aferrado” have won a trio of top honors at this year’s Clermont-Ferrand Short Film Festival, with each title winning a grand prize in the respective international, national and lab competitions.
Best known for his acting work on Australian film and television, “Unspoken” director Damian Walshe-Howling can now burnish his behind-the-camera bona fides with Clermont-Ferrand’s top international trophy. Set in late-70s Sydney, the film follows a young, Croatian born woman whose life spins out into chaos as Croatian independence protests overtake her adopted hometown.
Led by Quebecois star Marc-André Grondin (“C.R.A.Z.Y.”) and directed by Pier-Philippe Chevigny, the slaughterhouse-set slow-boil “Mercenary” won a special jury prize, while Maha Haj’s Locarno-winner “Upshot” can now add a Clermont-Ferrand audience prize to a long list of honors.
U.K.-based duo Zhang & Knight claimed two prizes for their film “A Bear Remembers,” taking home the Canal+ award and the European cinema award. Iceland’s Ingvar Eggert Sigurðsso (“A White, White Day,” “Godland”) won the international competition’s sole acting award for his role as an alcoholic who tries to combat his own addictions in Rúnar Rúnarsson’s “O.”
Mohamed Bourouissa’s “Genealogy of Violence” scored the top trophy out of this year’s national competition. Coming from a filmmaker with a background in video art and large-scale installations, the film uses 3D scanning and AI to explore questions of dispossession and social control through the prism of a commonplace police identity check. The new-media-assisted film also won a VFX prize, sponsored by Adobe.
Rounding out the national competition, Kim Fino’s “Oh Maybe Not Tonight” nabbed the special jury prize, Natalie Musteata and Alexandre Singh’s “Two People Exchanging Saliva” claimed the audience award, and Sharon Hakim’s “The Devil and the Bicycle” took the student prize. French funnyman Philippe Rebbot held the acting honor for his work in Amroise Rateau’s “Death of an Actor,” while the film was also named best comedy.
Mixing CGI and photogrammetry, Esteban Azuela’s low-fi 3D experiment “Aferrado” follows a car mechanic who leads a double life in modern Mexico City. The film can now boast the grand prize out of Clermont-Ferrand’s boundary-pushing Lab competition. Other prizes went to Alia Haju’s “Ship of Fools,” Paul Kermarec “Ni Dieu Ni Pere,” Joseph Gaï Ramaka’s “Wamè” and Nikola Ilić’s “Exit Through the Cuckoo’s Nest,” which won both the Festival Connexion award and the honor for best documentary.
Clermont-Ferrand’s 46th edition ran from Jan. 31 – Feb. 8 and break attendance records, welcoming 173,000 festival-goers.
