The Cannes Film Festival has revealed the next batch of its Official Selection, announcing the Short Film competition and La Cinef picks. (Find the full list at festival-cannes.com.)
Selected from 4,288 submissions, 11 shorts will be presented this year in Competition, coming from 12 countries: Argentina, Colombia, Spain, the United States, France, Hungary, Indonesia, Iceland, Norway, Poland, the United Kingdom and Ukraine. The Short Film Palme d’or will be decided by the Jury chaired by Ildikó Enyedi on Saturday, May 27, during the closing ceremony of the 76th Festival de Cannes.
Among the selections are several animated standouts, such as La Perra by Carla Melo Gampert (Colombia & France – 14′), a meditation on womanhood, sexuality and “being bitches” told through the relationship between a mother, a daughter and a stray dog; 27 by Flóra Anna Buda (Hungary & France – 11′), in which a tragic end to a birthday bash nudges a young woman living with her parents to independence; the BFI-backed Wild Summon directed by Karni Arieli & Saul Freed (U.K. – 14′), which fancifully reimagines the life cycle of wild salmon as human beings, narrated by Marianne Faithfull; and Le Sexe de Ma Mère (France – 14′) by Francis Canitrot, an animator on Metamorphosis (2019) and A Town Called Panic! The Christmas Log (2013) who was also part of the MoPA student team behind Azul (2012).
For its 26th edition, La Cinef (formerly La Cinéfondation) reviewed 2,000 films submitted by film schools around the world, selecting 14 short fictions and two animated shorts, among which 10 films are directed by women and seven by men. Thirteen countries from four continents are represented including Morocco, for the first time in selection. The Jury chaired by Ildikó Enyedi will give out three La Cinef awards, during a ceremony that will be followed by the screening of the awarded films, on Thursday, May 25 in the Buñuel theater.
The animated entries are Hao Yu’s Primitive Times (Uhrmenschen; Germany – 6′), produced at Filmuniversität Babelsberg KONRAD WOLF, and Electra (Czech Republic – 27′), the highly anticipated next film by Oscar-nominated student director Daria Kashcheeva (Daughter), produced by Zuzana Křivková and Martin Vandas from Czech MAUR film and co-produced with FAMU, Artichoke (Slovakia) and Papy3D (France).
For her graduate work, Kashcheeva drew inspiration from the Greek mythological figure Electra, translating her into today’s world. The protagonist of the film tries to define herself in relation to her mother and tries to understand her mixed feelings towards her father. She gradually isolates herself in her world and builds a relationship with her body and sexuality.
“I was inspired to structure the narrative this way by psychotherapy. During sessions, clients revolve around their memories of traumatic experiences. They jump from the past to the present, the images and memories change. By combining the pixilation animation technique together with live-action scenes, I was able to illustrate this narrative mosaic,” explains Kashcheeva.
Thanks to the success of Daughter — which won over a dozen honors from world-class festivals including Sundance, TIFF, Annecy, Stuttgart, Animafest, GLAS, Hiroshima and the Student Academy Awards — the student film project turned into a Czech-Slovak- French co-production, with the resulting film being 26 minutes long, unusual for animated shorts.
“A significant part of the shooting took place over 95 shooting days in the main studio of FAMU Studio in Prague,” says Křivková from the Czech production company MAUR film, which is the main producer. Producer Martin Vandas adds, “Thanks to a wide international co-production, complex animation puppets in the style of life-size Barbie dolls were created in France, and in Slovakia our co-producer Artichoke provided, among other things, the entire visual post-production.”
Festival distribution and sales for Electra is handled by French company Miyu Distribution (also handling 27), starting with the world premiere in May in Cannes and continuing to the Official Selection at the world’s largest animation festival in Annecy. Electra was financially supported by the Czech Film Fund, the Pilsen Region, the FILMTALENT ZLÍN Endowment Fund, ARTE France, Pictanovo, images in Hauts-de-France, Hauts-de-France region, Centre national du cinéma et de l’image animée CNC, Procirep and Angoa and Slovak Audiovisual Fund.
