MOSCOW SHORTS – DECEMBER 2020 AWARDS
BEST FILM
NUKRYŽIAVIMAS / CRUCIFIXION (2019)
Director: Danielius Minkevičius
Country: Lithuania
Duration: 25:00
Synopsis: A secretive man’s inner thoughts confront against the reality.
BEST DIRECTOR
Rebel (2019)
Director: Pier-Philippe Chevigny
Country: Canada
Duration: 15:00
Synopsis: Alex, a six-year-old boy from Quebec, is much too young to understand why thousands of refugees have been entering Canada illegally. Yet when his father takes him along to a vigilante patrol in the woods to hunt out trespassing migrants, something inside him tells him to rebel.
BEST SCREENPLAY
The apple of my eyes (2020)
Director: François SZABOWSKI
Country: France
Duration: 19:12
Synopsis: An eye surgeon has to operate the man who provoked his daughter’s death.
BEST CINEMATOGRAPHY
You Promise? (2020)
Director: Lin Laurin
Country: Sweden
Duration: 14:58
Synopsis: “You Promise?” takes place in Malmö, Sweden in 1988. The story follows Vida, 5, and her brother Alex, 3, when they get a new father figure in the family. It’s an aesthetic, poetic, and heartwarming short film about family love, divorce, and fear of change – from a five-year-old’s perspective.
BEST NARRATIVE SHORT FILM
IN BETWEEN (2020)
Director: Ana Pasti
Country: Romania
Duration: 20:05
Synopsis: It’s a late December night. Amalia is a career driven woman in her mid thirties and a mistress in a complicated love affair with a complicated man. While waiting to hear from her lover, Amalia encounters a 12 year old boy selling used books in the parking lot of a fast food drive through. She decides to “save” him from the long hours of waiting in the cold winter’s night for his bus to arrive in the morning, by giving him a ride home. The more they drive into the night the less certain it is who is saving who…
BEST STUDENT SHORT FILM
Psychophonic (2019)
Director: Aline Romero
Country: Spain
Duration: 05:42
Synopsis: During a full moon night, a cat is trapped inside a spooky house where a gramophone is playing, the cat will discover a secret while trying to escape and run for his life.
BEST DOCUMENTARY SHORT FILM
The Little Moon (2020)
Director: Elena Kairyte
Country: Lithuania
Duration: 26:00
Synopsis: “Where the last house faded away in the wheat, there lived a little girl, who walked at night out in the fields, with a bucket of water to mirror the moon.” It’s a true story, based on Tonino Guerra’s poem, about a girl who lives in a remote Lithuanian village. This single farm holds her entire world: family, beloved animals and the whole seeing moon.
BEST EXPERIMENTAL SHORT FILM
Kilter (2020)
Director: Rob Stanton-Cook
Country: Australia
Duration: 11:36
Synopsis: Kilter explores the wreckage left in the wake of generational toxic masculinity. Following a violent crime of passion, a gentle young man descends into a tormented reality as he struggles to reconcile who he is and what he has become.
BEST ANIMATION SHORT FILM
Sad Beauty (2020)
Director: Arjan Brentjes
Country: Netherlands
Duration: 09:50
Synopsis: In a heavily polluted world, a young woman mourns the disappearance of animal species. When she falls ill due to a bacterial infection, nature appears to send her a message in her hallucinations.
BEST MUSIC VIDEO
2 Down (Official Music Video) (2020)
Director: Sam Farage
Country: Finland
Duration: 06:55
Synopsis: The 2 Down music video depicts a journey of a lonely backpacker in a vast, dreamlike landscape of a never-ending mountain range. The traveller seems to be completely lost in thought. Painful memories start to arise from the past and she is forced to dive into them. She must fight the demons of guilt, blame and sorrow within in order to break free from this mental dissonance and find forgiveness, acceptance and gratitude to replace them. The story is about overcoming the worst of sufferings and clearing one’s mind from agony. It’s about facing one’s deepest fears and painful emotions head on, and growing from them as a person. No one is perfect and sometimes one needs to accept what is in order to move forward in life and strive to do one’s best. Life is short, and we should be spending it loving each other instead of fighting. Ultimately, 2 Down is about gratitude towards life.