As well as premiering 16 films from some of the world’s most acclaimed directors in the main competition, the Cannes Film Festival also hosts a prestigious competition for short films, by filmmakers who are just starting out. Tom Linay, Digital Cinema Media's Head of Film, picks out a few of his 2014 favourites...
Featuring nine entrants chosen from 3,450 films, each film in the short category was impeccably made. The production values and performances were worthy of feature length films, and they were difficult to fault on a technical level.
The winning short was Leidi, by London Film School graduate Simon Mesa Soto. It is a moving and beautifully-shot tale of a young mother in Bogota who is desperate to find the father of her child. She searches the city with her young child in tow and refuses to return home until she succeeds. It was Mesa Soto’s LFS graduation film and he’s reportedly based in London, so I expect we’ll be hearing more from him soon.
Whilst Leidi was a worthy winner (and with a jury led by Iranian Palme d’Or winning director, Abbas Kiarostami, it’s difficult to argue with the decision), it certainly wasn’t my favourite short. That accolade goes to the Norwegian comedy - Yes We Love. Directed by Hallvar Witzo, it features four stories concerning four different generations who each find themselves in crisis on Norwegian Independence Day. Each narrative is conveyed in a single take, and becomes more humorous as it unfolds. It’s very skilfully conceived, and was the recipient of by far the most rapturous reception from the audience at the official screening.
The other stand-out, Aissa, was the shortest film in the competition at just eight-minutes long, but made an enormously impactful point in all its 480 seconds. Aissa is a Congolese woman residing in France who claims to be under the age of 18. However, the authorities believe her to be older, and if she is, she will be deported. To determine her real age she must undergo a rigorous and intrusive physical examination. Most of the eight minute run-time is made up of the examination – an intensely dehumanising experience that shines a light on an unreported and unsavoury aspect of French immigration policy. It makes for a powerful short film experience.
Finally, the best film I saw this year in Cannes was Damian Chazelle’s Whiplash, that was played at the Director’s Fortnight strand. It stars the soon-to-be-huge Miles Teller as a young drummer who yearns to be a jazz great. When he joins a celebrated conservatory, he encounters a teacher whose methods border on the sociopathic. It’s a wonderful film that, through its razor sharp editing, plays out like a jazz action film. Interestingly, it originally started out as an 18-minute short. Chazelle wrote the feature-length script, then took 15 pages from it and turned it into a short, which was screened at the 2013 Sundance Film Festival to much acclaim. This attracted investors, and the film went into production shortly after.
Once again, when the prizes were handed out on the final weekend of the festival, Cannes 2014 proved that it is the pinnacle for filmmakers working in both short and long form content.
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