Golden Shorts: Best Films in Major Festivals

An unconventional replication of the way we communicate in virtual medium, having each shot in a different style, Rate Me portrays a teen escort, Coco, through the prism of others’ trashy and peculiar comments. The directors succeeds to create a contradiction of terms between the critical segments of her clients or random people she met, lacking sympathy and offering a wide range of identities and endings which imply harshly some of their obscure desires. Its music backdrops follow an ironic and a potential political discourse in which the filmmaker wants to oblige us to pay fully attention to structural identity in a modern and virtual world where self-branding is available to each and every one of us and it’s also seen as a lifestyle. (Claudia Cojocariu, BIEFF)

To Be and to Come Back is a short video portrait in which the author gives us a sneak peak of his grandparents, aligning scenes of work, critical discussions about his future and fragments of a supposed rehearsal for his 'fiction' film. The editing clearly states his wish to show us through metafiction and metaphor his relationship with his grandparents by explaining what his profession of a filmmaker is about. His grandmother doesn’t seem so well-convinced that he will succeed; therefore, the film turns to a be a funny and harshly selfportrait of the director, in which we hear the sulky voice of his grandmother, we see personal fragments and images of their house and we sense a need to look back and forth for our own good. (Claudia Cojocariu, BIEFF)

In his highly acclaimed Waves '98, winner of the Palme d'or at Cannes in 2015, Ely Dagher deconstructs his love-hate relationship with his home city, in a beautiful self-reflective piece of filmmaking.  Shots of live action are employed together with several types of animation techniques to tell the story of Omar, whose experience of living in segregated post civil war Beirut adds to the inherent turmoils that harrow any teenager. Quotidian expeditions up the rooftop of his school reveal yet the same grim view of a city drenched in despair and uncertainty, parts of which he is not even allowed to tread. Until the day a giant golden elephant turns up drifting in the sky. Sucked into the giant's belly, Omar discovers - and the viewer with him, a world he never knew even existed. It may be a hopeful version of the city that takes shape in Omar's imagination. At times, it  shatters to pieces, but the fragments come together again. Eventually, the dream comes to an end, and, above a city of a less grim appearance, a golden elephant floats gently away. (Adina Marin, BIEFF)

Kung Fury is an ambitious short film of high production value, which manages to pack every trope of the 80s cop movie genre. We encounter a visual compilation of all time monsters and patterns of action movies, the notion of going back to the past and a battle between good and evil, where the first one is helped by the presence of human-animal hybrids and the latter is the ultimate villain, Adolf Hitler. Apart from being a homage to all the impressive things of the 80s, its stylistic approach and thrilling visual effects mark its camp aesthetic with a sensibility based on deliberate and self-acknowledged theatricality; its graphics and cover story deepens in our brain and reveals a metatextual and an iconic construction of a cult and hip short film. (Claudia Cojocariu, BIEFF)

The message evoked in Belladonna consists on a ground of human relations and it switches on an emotional feeling and also empathy for the main protagonist. After an internal outbreak she changes her mind when hearing about a misfortune of an old lady that she seems to reject in the first place. The stylistic approach – a blurred point-of-view – speaks about limitation, not only for her sight after an ophthalmological consult but also for communication. The director portrays a woman who will realize that the most beautiful thing about the sensitivity towards the world of others is the emancipation of her own perception and the courage to go beyond the superficial appearance of things. (Claudia Cojocariu, BIEFF)