The 13th Vilnius International Short Film Festival ended its exciting four-day adventure with awarding the best films of this year’s competition programmes. On Sunday evening we announced the winners of Best fiction, animation, documentary and Best Lithuanian short film titles. Two more films that were among the most memorable, received the Special Mention from the international jury.
This year the Vilnius International Short Film Festival opened the doors to cinemas in 6 different cities in Lithuania: Vilnius, Kaunas, Klaipėda, Panevėžys, Marijampolė and Ukmergė. On the 16th to 19th of January a total of 41 films from the 6 international and 2 national programmes, competed for the festival’s awards. The short films were judged by the jury, which this year included film director Aistė Žegulytė (Lithuania), Annecy International Animation Film Festival’s programmer Sébastien Sperer (France), and an award winning producer, head of production company „Mindwax“ Dora Nedeczky (Hungary).
Mathilde Delaunay’s Slanted Girl (France) was recognized as the Best fiction film from the International Competition. It mesmerized the jury with its unique aesthetics, powerful cinematic and sonic world that show us to the organic and mysterious essence of womanhood on 16mm.
The Best short animation award went to a surreal and heart-warming portrait of a father and son relationship – Jon Frickey’s Cat Days (Germany, Japan). The film explores diversity and identity in its own special way through its naïve, yet cutting-edge style.
For the sharp cinematic language and well controlled auto-irony in a perspective of Human – Animal relationships, Karol Lindholm’s In a Lion (Poland) was recognized as the Best documentary short film The previous year the film earned itself multiple best short and best documentary awards in various competitions and festivals around the globe.
The Jury gave a Special Mention to a vibrant and intense film that premiered last year in Toronto Interntional Film Festival – Teemu Niukkanen’s Are you Hungry? (Finland), which portrays a tender relationship of mother and son in a uniquely hilarious, and very current way.
The jury emphasized their delight with the powerful National competition programme this year and admitted that singling out the Best Lithuanian Short was especially difficult.
The title of the Best Lithuanian Short Film from the National Competition went to Skirmanta Jakaitė and her animation film The Juggler (Lithuanian, France). In jury’s words this film creates an atmosphere through its unique style, astonishing music and sound design world, while telling us an uncanny, thought-provoking story about one life among others. The winner was awarded 1000 Euro cash prize which was presented by the Vilnius City Mayor Remigijus Šimašius.
After long jury deliberation, it was decided to dedicate another Special Mention to a Lithuanian film that took a very sensitive look at the fragility of life, temporary substance, and beauty – Marija Stonytė’s film One Life. According to the jury, the film speaks out on a topic that we in this day and age try to avoid, additionally, the film especially stood out for its sincerity, simplicity and strong cinematic metaphor.
This year’s award-winning films will be shown in the special screenings in the cinemas of Vilnius city: January 20th 18:30 in “Pasaka” cinema theatre and January 21st 19:00 in “Skalvija” film centre.
