Born in Shanghai, China in 1989, he graduated from the Shanghai Institute of Technology in 2012. His short films have screened at film festivals around the world including in Venice, Sakhalin, Tampere, Annecy and Zagreb. He lives and works in Shanghai.
The camera falls into the water. A man without arms stands at the edge of the pool and fishes the diving goggles out of his trousers with his foot. Like an animal, he bites the hand of a woman standing next to him. A package is opened. A jump in the water, followed by a splash! It is the exploding of a bomb, marking the transition of life to death. With a precise montage of a few sound elements, animated images and framing, Shen Jie tells of borderlines and possibilities. Who holds whom and when? The linear narrative is suspended. Urgency and restlessness are inherent features of the film. The images are inspired by the work of British painter David Hockney whose famous work, ‘Portrait of an Artist (Pool with Two Figures)’ was auctioned in November 2018 – at a price that has never before been paid for the work of a living artist.
Shen Jie belongs to a young generation of independent animation filmmakers in China who are gaining international acclaim.
What is your ambition in the film?
I’d like to try a more abstract way to narrate a little story.
What do you like about the short form?
I think short form works well for some extreme expressions. Less running time actually gives me more room to experiment. I would, of course, like to try a longer form, if I have a suitable idea for it.
What are your future plans?
I’m making a new short film. And I recently started to write poems and some little stories. Currently no any more detailed future plan.
24 films from 17 countries will be competing for the Golden and Silver Bear, the Audi Short Film Award, endowed with 20,000 euros, and a nomination as “Berlin Short Film Candidate for the European Film Awards 2019”.
The writer and director Chema García Ibarra was born in Elche, Spain in 1980. He studied advertising and public relations at the Universidad de Alicante and, alongside music videos and commercials, also made short films. His ‘domestic science-fiction’ films have screened at festivals worldwide, including at the Berlinale, Sundance, San Sebastián, Quinzaine des Réalisateurs and Ann Arbor. He teaches ‘anti-filmmaking’ at the Escuela de Cinematografía y del Audiovisual de la Comunidad de Madrid.
Born in Donostia, Spain in 1981, Ion de Sosa studied at the Escuela de Cinematografía y del Audiovisual de la Comunidad de Madrid and is a cinematographer, producer and director, primarily of 16mm films. He currently lives in Barcelona but spent the last ten years in Berlin. His films have screened at festivals including Locarno, Toronto and Hong Kong. His feature film Sueñan los androides (Androids Dream) screened in the 2015 Forum. He would love to direct a Batman sequel.
The swimming pool has played an important role throughout film history – most often as a romping ground for the sophisticated and hedonistic Dolce Vita. But it can be so much more, even sinister, as in Sunset Boulevard. In Leyenda dorada a rather unglamorous swimming pool of diminished charm forms the focal point of the story. A lazy summer’s day in the Spanish village of Montánchez, and people of all ages enjoy themselves at the outdoor pool. It is an almost utopian depiction of community, under the lofty, watchful gaze of Our Lady of Consolation. While conflicts, aggression, rivalries and animosities have a siesta, the villagers take a well-deserved break. Formally, the film draws on the tradition of New Objectivity. But unlike Robert Siodmak’s Menschen am Sonntag (1930) and its lido sequence, this is a wee summer fairy tale.
An ex-voto is a religious offering to a divinity, like a Saint or the Virgin, as a thanksgiving for a miraculous gift. For example, an unexpected cure to an illness or a fortuitous accident surviving. This art form is popular and sacred at the same time. This is so attractive for us.
We wanted to put in cinema this expression form that usually is made as a painting or sculpture.
What do you like about the short form?
In short form, the film decides his length.
What are your future plans?
We want to focus in Chema’s first feature film, called “Sacred spirit”. Ion will be the D.O.P. and producer along with our partner Leire Apellaniz. If everything goes as we want, the shooting will be in the beginning of 2020.
24 films from 17 countries will be competing for the Golden and Silver Bear, the Audi Short Film Award, endowed with 20,000 euros, and a nomination as “Berlin Short Film Candidate for the European Film Awards 2019”.
Born in Buenos Aires, Argentina in 1961, he studied film at the Escuela Panamericana de Arte and then at New York University. After several short and mid-length films, he made his feature debut in 1992 with Rapado(Cropped Head). He is also a writer and he wrote the screenplay for this film based on a story in his short story collection of the same name. The film screened at Locarno, as have some of his other works, including his 2006 documentary Copacabana. Recent years have seen several retrospectives of his work, including in the USA, Spain, Portugal and South Korea.
Federico, is in his mid-twenties and lives alone in Buenos Aires. The day his grandmother dies, he decides to part with his girlfriend Magda. He fears hurting her. But when the time comes, she beats him to it. She is laid-back, feisty and not even close to feeling hurt. He is however, especially when he learns that she already has someone new. But then he finds the potato knishes in the freezer that his recently departed grandmother gave him and everything changes. Rejtman’s stage is the microcosm of the Argentine society, which he deciphers in carefully composed images with a sparsely told story and a directing approach in defiance of retro realism. Rejtman belongs to the new wave of Argentine film that first gained recognition in Europe in the mid-1990s. According to Dr. Rocío Gordon of the University of Virginia, the key aspect of his work is that the director and author does not tell linear stories in a run-of-the-mill way, but rather refers to an aesthetic of apathy. Within this apathy, comedy gains the greatest of scopes – a unique position in Argentina until now.
I’m a writer, as well as a filmmaker. In literature I write only short stories, I never wrote a novel. When I started writing literature I did it because it didn’t make sense to write scripts for short films that I would never be able to make. It’s not realistic to plan to make twelve short films in a year, for example, but it makes sense to write twelve short stories and publish them in a collection.
Lately my short stories have become very long (no less than 100 pages). And making feature length films usually takes much longer than one would wish. This is why I decided to go back to the short form in film, thinking that it would be an easy and smooth operation. Of course, it was not.
What do you like about the short form?
Its apparent lack of ambition. It can also be a healthy antidote against today’s endless chapters, seasons, etc.
SHAKTI in so many ways, seems to be so achieved- so lived. You know the situations by heart- at least it seems so. Is it an autobiographical movie? Where do you find inspiration- for your writing, filmmaking?
No, it is not an autobiographical movie, although one of the songs that we used to sing in my high school choir was “Climbing up the Mountain, Children”; my grandmother used to cook great potato knishes which I thought were the best in the world, etcetera.
You made few movies, landmarks in argentinean cinema- did you ever feel like you could have made more, you missed something, you made different steps today if restart would be an opportunity?
I made four features, one documentary, one tv movie, and three or four short films so far. I also published five books of short stories. And I wouldn’t change a coma or a frame of anything I did. Basically because it’s already done. I don’t think it’s wise to think about the past from the present, and a film and a book are also the product of their circumstances which are always unique. These movies and books are my work, and I think they are all part of the same world, that evolves from film to film and from book to book; but they are also documents.
What freed you up in never settling down in only one filmformat but doing what you did and being in competition now with a shortfilm?
I went to a radio program once to talk about my work and the host, who was a philosopher, recommended me a book, Shunryu Suzuki’s “Zen mind beginner’s mind”. I liked the idea. It seems that once you make a feature then you should only make features! It’s some kind of unwritten law. People were surprised when I decided to make a short: “What for?” But a couple of years ago I taught for two years a short film screenwriting workshop. And I realized that it had been a really long time since I had made a short film myself. It was about time.
What are your future plans?
May be a new short film later this year, and a feature length, “La práctica”, to be shot in Chile, hopefully very soon.
24 films from 17 countries will be competing for the Golden and Silver Bear, the Audi Short Film Award, endowed with 20,000 euros, and a nomination as “Berlin Short Film Candidate for the European Film Awards 2019”.
Born in Hungary in 1989, she studied animation at the Moholy-Nagy University of Art and Design (MOME) in Budapest. Her graduation film, A kíváncsiság kora (The Age of Curious), won an award at Annecy in 2013; her first self-produced film, the Hungarian, Czech and Slovakian co-production Superbia, premiered in the Semaine de la Critique at Cannes where it was the sole animated film in the competition.
The nipple is the power button that gets the ‘cinema of the mind’ rolling – or is it in fact a reality? An X-ray reveals it quite clearly: a little man nestled between the rib bones. There he lies and sleeps. The male’s host goes crazy, but it doesn’t help, he falls asleep exhausted. When he wakes up the next morning, he finds a wound where his nipple used to be, and footprints on the floor. The search begins. But the little man refuses to be intimidated or annoyed or fooled. He confidently sets off to find his place in this gay universe. Who actually loves whom here? Surrealistic and absurd settings come up against a real, everyday world. Unfathomable, inexplicable, sensual, feisty, peculiar.
What is your ambition in the film
In this particular film I wanted to show a character that only knows how to love somebody but doesn’t have the tools to understand how he should be loved.
What do you like about the short form?
I always find it degrading when people only look at the short format as a stepping stone to feature length films. A short film can fill you with questions in a matter of minutes – that would be a challange to answer for days afterwards.
What are your future plans?
After making a film I find it hard to start with a new one for a very long time. That‘ s why I’m so excited to start teaching at university for the first time soon.
24 films from 17 countries will be competing for the Golden and Silver Bear, the Audi Short Film Award, endowed with 20,000 euros, and a nomination as “Berlin Short Film Candidate for the European Film Awards 2019”.
Born in Kerala, India in 1987, he studied electronics and communication engineering and worked as a software engineer for four years. In 2012, inspired by his visits to international film festivals, he quit his job and turned his attentions to film. He studied visual media at the University of Calicut in Kerala and took a master’s degree at the Sarajevo Film Academy where, thanks to a workshop led by director Alain Fleischer, he became aware of Le Fresnoy – Studio National des Arts Contemporains in France and went on to study there.
Bosnian War 1992. In the north of Bosnia and Herzegovina lies the concentration camp Omarska, which according to Serbian reports was an assembly point and investigation centre. Between May and August 1992, thousands of people were interned, tortured, raped and murdered there. Now it is a factory site of the Arcelor Mittal Company. So far, those murdered there have yet to be commemorated. The film is based on the agonizing memories of Nusreta Sivac, who served as a judge until the outbreak of the war. She was sent to the Omarska concentration camp and had to work in the kitchen. From there she could observe the atrocities and became a victim of the violence herself. Omarska tries to construct a virtual memorial using archive material, videos and statements by survivors in a 3D animation. As soon as the last witnesses have died, text and image documents will play a central role in the historical reappraisal of the events. Scientists, artists, filmmakers and writers will become interpreters of the past and will have to replace the survivors who were the historians of their own experience.
I hope the voices from Prijedor will be heard more louder especially in those places, where subject matter is not well known. Through this film, my attempt was to construct a memorial (in 3D animation) mainly guided by the memories of the survivors with the help of archive images. I believe this film will open a dialogue on how reckoning the history could play an important role in reconciliation. And I feel Berlinale will play a vital role in reinforcing this aspect.
What do you like about the short form?
I always liked the films that takes their own time to find their rhythm, and this aspect in short form is quite challenging – to get it right could be a nerve racking experience. For me, I could never predict what would be the end result. Especially with my latest film Omarska, we decided to reject the existing structure and narration, just two days before we had to finish our edit . With the short format, it could be just a matter of making one bad decision. And we never really know if it is really a bad decision or not. I enjoy this restless situation, which forces you in the end, to purely go with your intuition.
What are your future plans?
While realizing Omarska, I got to know about Hajra who was detained at Omarska. My urge is to know more about Hajra especially during her end times and I feel an urge to make a film on her. Also, a film about my hometown -Kannur, where political murders have been witnessed from past many years.
Also more importantly, to help the young filmmakers and artists from my state, in realizing their dreams in whichever way I can, especially who has no academic backgrounds in arts from any privileged institutions. As I feel public funds in India, more opportunities are concentrated on those, who are qualified from elite academies. I strongly feel this eligibility criteria needs to be relooked.
24 films from 17 countries will be competing for the Golden and Silver Bear, the Audi Short Film Award, endowed with 20,000 euros, and a nomination as “Berlin Short Film Candidate for the European Film Awards 2019”.
Born in Barcelona, Spain in 1992, she is a photographer and filmmaker. Moving to Berlin in 2012, she spent three years collaborating with the performance collective the–family, performing across Europe at venues including the Astrup Fearnley Museum in Oslo and the Chisenhale Gallery in London. While in Berlin, she also made her first short film, Bad Lesbian. After four years in Germany, she returned to her hometown and made Suc de síndria(Watermelon Juice). She also works as a photographer for various agencies, producers and publications including i-D, Dream Magazine, Garage Films, Distinto Films and Erika Lust.
On holiday in Catalonia, Pol and Bàrbara share a house with friends. The pair does what pairs do amidst the heat of summer and alongside the body of another. But something is wrong, and is instantly noticeable. She tries to regain her ability to orgasm, and he helps her. How naturally, effortlessly and adroitly the filmmaker directs this love and this work. It only takes a moment for rape to interfere with an entire lifetime. How much time, effort and dedication does it take to find your way back to your own sexuality? Pol and Bàrbara succeed because haste is suspended and the Suc de síndria, the juice of the watermelon, entices pleasure.
What is your ambition in the film?
My aim with this film is to present an alternative narrative of a woman who overcomes an experience of sexual abuse. When people talk about this reality the focus is always on the trauma instead of in the chance of healing, and I wanted to bring a new perspective on the topic, with more light and hope. Also I wanted to show a healthy relationship between the two protagonists, based on respect, compassion and trust.
What do you like about the short form?
I think it’s really difficult to make a good short film, because you have less time to make the audience engage and empathize with your story and characters. To create that connection in such a short time is pretty challenging. I guess I’m attracted to that and the creative freedom you can have in all the creative process.
What are your future plans?
I’m currently working on a feature film script. I think it’s going to take some time, because so far it has been a really intuitive and delicate process. My perfect plan would be to shoot the movie once the script is finished.
24 films from 17 countries will be competing for the Golden and Silver Bear, the Audi Short Film Award, endowed with 20,000 euros, and a nomination as “Berlin Short Film Candidate for the European Film Awards 2019”.
Born in Taiwan in 1983, she lives and works in Montreal, Canada. Through intuitive play and experimentation, her visual artworks and films often explore different forms of divination arts and traditional tales, particularly via the angle of folk religion and oral history.
Yen-Chao Lin travelled along the east coast of Taiwan – an area characterized by its wild nature, colonization and population exodus. The Amis is the largest of many ethnic minorities in Taiwan officially recognised as indigenous peoples. In search of different spiritual practices belonging to the indigenous people of Makuta’ay, Yen-Chao Lin places the memories of the old Amis spirit keepers on an equal footing with the practices of Daoist rituals and Presbyterian burials, allowing personal prayers to resound and collective resistance to emerge. The Spirit Keepers of Makuta’ay was shot on Super 8 film and developed by the director by hand. The effects created during the development process add an additional layer of spiritual interpretation. A miniature, an essay, an impressionistic painting.
I hope to bring more awareness to Indigenous issues and the consequences of colonization in Taiwan and elsewhere. Here in Canada, The Truth and Reconciliation Commission has triggered a lot of decolonizing movements in the arts and in the broader society. I hope people in a privileged position can use their privilege to enact change because every little thing one does contributes to the collective change.
What do you like about the short form?
I come from a DIY background and I’m a perfectionist. I like to be able to do things myself, or to work very closely with my collaborators.
What are your future plans?
As a Canadian artist, I live in the art eco system: production – dissemination – seek funding for new projects.
24 films from 17 countries will be competing for the Golden and Silver Bear, the Audi Short Film Award, endowed with 20,000 euros, and a nomination as “Berlin Short Film Candidate for the European Film Awards 2019”.
Still wanna know more? There’s a Q&A with Yen-Chao Lin on The New Current, too.
Born in Singapore in 1984, he studied animation at the island city-state’s Nanyang Technological University. In his films he animates fantasy worlds in which he explores his gay identity through personal storytelling. He also works as a media artist and was artist-in-residence at the Djerassi Resident Artists Program and co-artist at the Headlands Center for the Arts, both in California, USA.
A forest, a man, a suitcase. To walk, to hatch, to transform oneself. A discovery, discovering oneself? By combining various cinematic techniques, animation artist Tan Wei Keong creates a universe with a minimum of gestures in order to describe the complexity of a search. The repetition of gestures holds a magic of its own, and the exploration of space and ego is surprisingly reflected in the sound track and in the nakedness of the man. Freedom lies in the gaze itself.
To match the equal amounts of hope and despair. The search for the idea of home and belonging is a cyclical struggle, and I want to tell this story that weaves in between fiction and personal history, and form a conversation with which people could empathise.
What do you like about the short form?
That there are no checklist that must be fulfilled – it is free-form and can give sound to a voice that might otherwise be inaudible.
What are your future plans?
I am researching for an early draft of a story that has been swimming in my mind for the longest time. In addition to films, I am continuing to develop and expand an ongoing new media art project called Foundin, a public art installation relying on human interactions.
24 films from 17 countries will be competing for the Golden and Silver Bear, the Audi Short Film Award, endowed with 20,000 euros, and a nomination as “Berlin Short Film Candidate for the European Film Awards 2019”.
Still wanna know more? There’s a Q&A with Tan Wei Keong on The New Current, too.
Born in Santiago de Chile in 1987, she pursued dance, drawing and music from an early age. She has a degree in image and sound design from the University of Buenos Aires in Argentina.
A fishing cove on an island fallen out of time and space, almost like the rocky island in Michelangelo Antonionis L’Avventura (1960). Nature is not merely decoration, but an active force of events. Ships appear in the distance, but do not dock. Here is where Gabriel works with a small group of young men. They amuse themselves in an age-appropriate way, but also talk frequently of the devil and are magically drawn to a cave. Out of nowhere, an androgynous creature appears called Héctor. Gabriel instantly falls in love. The birth of a love that Gabriel tries to decipher. But the enigmatic girl disappears. The other men burn her tent and clothes at night. A visually bewitching and disturbing film poem, which remains reserved and vague, constituting its fascination and magic.
What is your ambition in the film?
This is the first short film that I premiered in my life, it is the first time that I share something of mine that has a life of its own! It will be beautiful if its images and sounds cause some new idea or feeling in others and that these readings will be also new to me. Honestly, I do not expect a specific type of discussion, I just hope there can be one.
What do you like about the short form?
It’s not something I’ve really thought about. I think that the short length has the advantage of a more easily dispensing with a strong „hook“. Maybe that’s why it’s a good space for narrative exploration.
What are your future plans?
I want to do many things. I want to do classes, I want to migrate again, I want to work with children, to participate in an artistic residence. In creative terms, I have a couple of long-term projects that I want to develop during this year, one is a documentary in the south of Chile and the other is a project that in the first instance will be an audiovisual blog and then see what springs from there.
24 films from 17 countries will be competing for the Golden and Silver Bear, the Audi Short Film Award, endowed with 20,000 euros, and a nomination as “Berlin Short Film Candidate for the European Film Awards 2019”.
Still wanna know more? There’s a Q&A with Victoria Giesen Carvajal on The New Current, too.
Let us introduce you to director Samir Karahoda from Kosovo, who is participating in this year’s Berlinale Shorts competition — with the first Kosovar film at Berlinale Shorts ever!
Born in Prizren, Kosovo in 1977, he began to working as a photographer in 1992. In 2003 he completed a photography degree at the Mimar Sinan Fine Arts University in Istanbul, where he is currently a postgraduate student. Alongside his work as a photographer, he is also a cinematographer and lecturer and curates the short film programme at the DokuFest International Documentary Film Festival in Prizren. Në Mes (In Between) is his directorial debut.
In the age of globalisation, digitalisation and over 68 million refugees worldwide, questions arise. What, where and when is homeland? What is ‘Leitkultur’ (‘defining culture’)? A leading German politician even advocated the establishment of a ‘Heimat’ (‘homeland’) ministry. Në Mes examines traditional family and patriarchal values and ideas. In rural Kosovo, fathers build identical houses for their sons. These sons live all over the place, anywhere except Kosovo. The houses embody the love, longing and hope of those who stayed at home for those who went to work abroad that they will one day return and settle here again. In practise however, they only ever come back for family celebrations and funerals. Although they feel connected to the homeland and culture of their childhood and youth, they also feel alienated. Do they even want to return? So while the houses are symbols of family equality and unity, they are also castles in the air.
The filmmaking style reflects my process of understanding this phenomena allowing me to try and reflect this to others through careful observational portraiture of the families as well as my inner reflections of the vision I’d been seeing for a long time — houses all in a row, all of them exactly the same, all of them sitting empty. Other topics began to emerge that further explained this curious occurrence. Film is strongly concentrated on the visual image, mainly through static images of the houses, details of construction, portraits of fathers and brothers and the geographical position of the whereabouts of houses.
What do you like about the short form?
It’s a nice step to test personal creative boundaries and in the other side it’s a form that gives the filmmaker a chance to share its story faster and cheaper to the audience!
What are your future plans?
I’m „In between“ so still couldn’t decide what I’m going to do in the future… Whatever I work on in the future, I will be shooting and framing it myself, it’s a nice experience.
24 films from 17 countries will be competing for the Golden and Silver Bear, the Audi Short Film Award, endowed with 20,000 euros, and a nomination as “Berlin Short Film Candidate for the European Film Awards 2019”.
Still wanna know more? There’s a Q&A with Samir Karahoda on The New Current, too.
Born in Budapest, Hungary in 1991, after graduating with a degree in animation Flóra Anna Buda worked as a director and illustrator in animated film. One of her chief goals is to seek out new ways to tell stories and to connect her interests in science and the interpretation of dreams with her personal experience. She is currently participating in the European Union-funded Animation Sans Frontières training programme where she is developing new projects.
Three women, three lives in parallel worlds, until the moment a fly causes a bug in the system. The universe collapses, sex is in the air, bras are overrated and the stars twinkle! In the animated film Entropia by Flóra Anna Buda, colours explode and sensually unleash new possibilities: Thanks to the fly, all that is abstract comes to life and sexuality plays an integral role. While there are echoes of the sci-fi series Black Mirror, the colours make everything more vibrant. The doe by the river is a nod towards Hungarian animation artist Réka Bucsi, whose work has equally opened up more creative narrative strategies in animated film. Buda’s graduation film heralds a new generation of animation artists from Hungary.
What is your ambition in the film?
My ambition was to create a story where I can define myself in the most honest way as a young woman.
What do you like about the short form?
I like it because it’s a challenge. You have to express yourself in a very simple way to be able to keep it short. Because of that you must compress your message by using symbols or parallel cuts for example. The options are endless but at the end you need to define your film based on your values to make it work.
What are your future plans?
Recently I am participating on an international workshop called ASF (Animation Sans Frontiére), where I have the chance to develop a next short film. At the moment I am working on the treatment and searching for the visuals. In the future I would like to experiment with live action and VR too.
24 films from 17 countries will be competing for the Golden and Silver Bear, the Audi Short Film Award, endowed with 20,000 euros, and a nomination as “Berlin Short Film Candidate for the European Film Awards 2019”.
Still wanna know more? There’s a Q&A with Flóra Anna Buda on The New Current, too.
We publish a pocket-sized brochure with further information on films and participants. Printed ones are available in Potsdamer Platz Arkaden from February 5. You’re very welcome to have a read at the Berlinale Shorts e-paper, too. Enjoy!
The selection of the Berlinale Shorts 2019 is an essence of current contemporary filmmaking. Power, visibility and knowledge have a significant influence on the possibility of participation. This year, our Berlinale Shorts‘ selection will take a close look at these integral elements, searching for new ways to create a worthwhile future together. You’re very welcome to watch the statement by Maike Mia Höhne, curator of Berlinale Shorts, and check all details regarding programmes, dates and times via the Berlinale website.
We are almost there! Another year has gone by and the 69th Berlin International Film Festival is about to start. Before we begin sharing more details concerning the contributions of 2019 with you, we want to know how the winners of last year’s competition have been spending the time after their success in 2018. Check out the interview with Réka Bucsi, who won the Audi Short Film Award 2018 with Solar Walk.
We can’t wait to see her again in February: Don’t miss Réka Bucsis talk with Jeffrey Bowers, Senior Curator at Vimeo and part of the International Short Film Jury 2019. Meet them on February 10 at the Audi Berlinale Lounge, Marlene-Dietrich-Platz – just next to the Red Carpet. The panel is for free and open for everyone. 4:00 – 5:00 PM.
How has life been since last year’s Berlinale Shorts?
Life has been busy and exciting, I have been traveling almost all year. I took on some small animation projects, but I also had the opportunity to start focusing on my new personal film, which would not have been possible without winning the Audi Short Film Award last year. Winning an award at a festival like Berlinale as an animation filmmaker has been pretty special as it turns out.
What did winning the award mean to you personally?
The night I won the award, was very emotional for me. I never felt this much appreciation and love coming at me for my work all at once. It was very direct from many wonderful people, who’s work I admire and respect. It felt real and very surreal at the same time, and I got so much energy out of that night for a long time after. It also inspired me to take on a bigger project in the future and be confident about what I want to say and how I want to do that.
What are your plans for 2019?
My plans are to finish the preparations for my upcoming new film, and not take on smaller projects on the side. I am pretty excited about this year, and I would like to use my time and focus and just enjoy the freedom of writing and drawing my personal film as long as I have the opportunity to do that. I am also going to teach a little bit at Calarts, which is going to be a first for me, so that’s also something I am looking forward to.
At the 2019 edition of Berlinale Shorts, 24 films from 17 countries will be competing for the Golden and Silver Bear, the Audi Short Film Award (endowed with 20,000 euros) and a nomination as “Berlin Short Film Candidate for the European Film Awards 2019”.
We are almost there! Another year has gone by and the 69th Berlin International Film Festival is about to start. Before we begin sharing more details concerning the contributions of 2019 with you, we want to know how the winners of last year’s competition have been spending the time after their success in 2018.
Check out the interview with Samuel Ishimwe, who won the Silver Bear Jury Prize (Short Film) 2018 with Imfura.
How has life been since last year’s Berlinale Shorts?
Life has been great career-wise, the Berlinale really shed a light on my film, after I travelled to multiple good festivals, and got to see how it interacts with different audiences.
What did winning the award mean to you personally?
It gave me a great feeling of acceptance and uplifted my confidence to continue shape my own cinematic accent.
What are your plans for 2019?
I want to end this year with a new film, a feature film – if it all goes as planned.
At the 2019 edition of Berlinale Shorts, 24 films from 17 countries will be competing for the Golden and Silver Bear, the Audi Short Film Award (endowed with 20,000 euros) and a nomination as “Berlin Short Film Candidate for the European Film Awards 2019”.
