Awards of the 24 International Film Schools Festival

With awards and mentions for student short films from 13 countries (Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Cuba, Czech Republic, France, Hungary, India, Russia, Slovakia, Spain, Venezuela and Uruguay), the 24 International Film Schools Festival (FIEC) concluded on Friday, August 16, organized by the Uruguayan Film School (ECU) and Cinemateca Uruguaya.

The FIEC took place from August 13 to 16 at Cinemateca and Sala Zitarrosa, in Montevideo, and a selection of award-winning short films was screened on Saturday 17 at Cine MACA (Atchugarry Museum of Contemporary Art, Maldonado), the first in a series of alternative exhibitions in other locations around the country.

The 2024 selection included 62 fiction, non-fiction and animation short films, made by students from 58 film schools from 37 countries, including Uruguay. The number of submissions this year exceeded 2,400 short films from more than 100 countries, setting a new record.

The international call was channeled, as every year, through the International Association of Film and Television Schools (CILECT) and the Federation of Image and Sound Schools of Latin America (FEISAL), of which ECU is the only Uruguayan member, although participation is also open to film schools that are not members. The preselection of short films for competition was made by a team of 25 ECU students, in a task that took several months of viewing together with the programming committee.

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Professional Jury Awards

Composed of filmmaker Alejo Moguillansky, founding member of El Pampero Cine (Argentina); artist, curator and researcher specialized in film and video Angela López Ruiz (Deputy Director of the Contemporary Art Foundation); and director and screenwriter Cristhian Orta (graduated from ECU), the Professional Jury of the Festival decided to award the following prizes and mentions:

ANIMATION CATEGORY:

Special Mention: For an exceptional technical work put at the service of a powerful and poetic narrative:

On the 8th day, directed by Agathe Sénéchal, Alicia Massez, Elise Debruyne, Flavie Carin, Théo Duhautois – Pôle 3D (France)

Best Animation Award: For the quality of its animation and illustrations, its outstanding acting work and how it combines these (and other) narrative elements to give life to a script that builds a creative and personal portrait of a generation and its dilemmas:

Carcinização – directed by Denis Souza – Universidade Federal de Pelotas (Brazil)

NON-FICTION CATEGORY:

Special Mention: For the excellent work of documentary reconstruction of a terrorist attack that, due to its homophobic and transfobic nature, transcends borders to make the event visible to the world:

Poisoned well – directed by Radek Ševčík – Academy of Performing Arts in Bratislava (Slovakia)

Best Non-Fiction Award: For recovering the tradition in which cinema is, above all things, an instrument to record reality, an instrument to steal the beauty of the world, to capture the flight of a small plane piloted by its inventor in some corner of Russia, for understanding that cinema and aviation are two devices to capture the beauty of the sky:

Sky high – Directed by Mira Erkenova – Gerasimov Institute of Cinematography (Russia)

Ex Aequo Award for Best Fiction Film

Perhaps only cinema is capable of looking at the world, space and people with due distance, like a great flow of energy that travels from an atomic power plant to an electric boiler, and moving away even further to be able to see ourselves as part of an infinitely greater flow of energy, and decompose in it in the same way that light decomposes in a 16mm film:

3MWh – Directed by Marie-Magdalena Kochová – FAMU (Czech Republic)

To film the sound is a reckless act, reserved for the most daring filmmakers. Even more so if behind that sound we find characters and performances that seem to go at the speed of silence. Perhaps cinema can be that: listening to the silence of a forest waiting for the song of a bird. And when that happens, we will have learned to look at the silence:

Wandering bird – Directed by Victor Dupuis – Institut des Arts de Diffusion (Belgium)

BEST LATIN AMERICAN SHORT FILM

Special Mention: For the poetic quality in portraying the character and his surroundings:

Tintes – Directed by Glerifer Molina – Central University of Venezuela (Venezuela)

Best Latin American Short Award: For the grace of the story that, while portraying a singular emotional ritual, allows us to appreciate the sociocultural reality that surrounds it:

Palomar – Directed by José Luis Jiménez – EICTV (Cuba)

BEST URUGUAYAN SHORT FILM

Special Mention: For telling a story that explores the nature and limits between friendship and love, with a strong commitment to acting work and a direction that helps the viewer delve into the intimacy of the bond between the characters:

Street Dog – Directed by Theo Lucero – Uruguayan Film School (ECU)

First Prize: For addressing the drama of the separation between two friends through an original creative search, which combines surreal situations and absurd humor with elements that refer to classics of Uruguayan cinema:

Pascualina – Directed by Juan Pablo Gardella and Joaquín Martínez – Universidad Católica del Uruguay

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Student Jury Awards

Integrated by audiovisual students from the country, this year the jury included Elías De Martino (Uruguay Film School), Eugenia Pérez (University of Montevideo) and María Inés Colman (University of the Republic), who awarded the following prizes and mentions:

ANIMATION CATEGORY

Special Mention: For intimately presenting the unique story of three friends who, without separating, go through the experience of growing up in their own way, while searching for their place in the world.

Carcinização – directed by Denis Souza – Universidade Federal de Pelotas (Brazil)

Best Animation Award: For a captivating story about the formation of the world, where creation and destruction complement each other in a dynamic where neither of them exists without the other. A story that shows us that after chaos, there is always time for a new beginning.

Children of the bird – directed by Júlia Tudisco – Moholy-Nagy University of Art and Design (Hungary)

NON-FICTION CATEGORY

Special Mention: For presenting us with a vivid testimony of what it means to leave behind a past marked by war, now trying to come to terms with a new reality.

Where motion has not yet ceased – directed by Juliette Balthazard – UQAM (Canada)

Best Non-Fiction Award: For using cinema as a means to generate a moving dialogue between the past and the present, seeking in the figure of a grandmother and her photographic records the answers to find herself.

How did I get here? – Directed by Dorottya Márton – University of Theater and Film Arts (Hungary)

FICTION CATEGORY

Special Mention: For presenting a world where man stops being the center of nature, experimenting with resources such as digital electric discharges in the footage, to explore the relationship between the human being and material reality.

3MWh – Directed by Marie-Magdalena Kochová – FAMU (Czech Republic)

Best Fiction Award: For presenting in a poetic and powerful way the complex process of acceptance between a daughter and her father, making the most of resources and cinematographic language to address themes of personal transformation, identity and family connection.

Flowering Man – Directed by Soumyajit Ghosh Dastidar – Film & Television Institute of India (India)

BEST URUGUAYAN SHORT FILM

Special Mentions:

For delving into the genre and exploring the language with all the tools, resulting in a tense and engaging story:

La Penumbra – Directed by Manuel Rosa – Uruguayan Film School (ECU)

For the combination of languages ​​that result in a beautiful portrait of youth, summer and raw emotions:

Street Dog – Directed by Theo Lucero – Uruguayan Film School (ECU)

First Prize: Sony Award & Artemisa Lab Award & Vivace Post Award:

For presenting a moving story crossed by an identity crisis, where the discovery of oneself arises through those around us, reflections that invite us to embrace our true essence:

Bad moment – ​​Directed by Olivia Opizo Korondi – Uruguayan Film School (ECU)

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Audience Awards

The audience attending the festival voted at the end of each screening for their favorite short films. The vote counting yielded the following results:

Best International Short Film: God Level, directed by César Tormo – ECAM (Spain)

Best Uruguayan Short Film: Paper Birds, directed by Valentina Cáceres (Uruguayan Film School)

In total, the Festival awarded some 9.000 dollars in prizes.

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Parallel activities

During the first three days of the Festival, parallel activities were carried out aimed at film and audiovisual students from all over the country, recent graduates of the different training centers, professionals and workers in the sector, and of course all interested audiences.

This year we have three master classes by experts from Argentina, as a sign of support for the difficult time that the neighboring country and its audiovisual sector are going through. Our guests were: director and screenwriter Paula Hernández (Los somámbulos, Las siamesas, El viento que rampada), who had a conversation with Cristhian Orta and the audience about the processes of literary adaptation to cinema; the director, producer, screenwriter and editor Alejo Moguillansky (El Pampero Cine), who reflected on the construction of film narrative from the editing, together with filmmaker and teacher Soledad Castro (graduate from ECU); and Mariana Levy (Argentinean screenwriter, playwright, director, actress and teacher), who offered an overview of the current situation in the production of serial formats and the universe of streaming platforms, providing guidance on how to conceive and develop a successful series project.

There were three different events, all very enriching, with high participation, especially of film and audiovisual students. The three master classes will be uploaded to the ECU YouTube channel.

After the awards ceremony in Sala Zitarrosa, the FIEC concluded on Friday night with a toast and closing party at the ECU headquarters, which included the participation of filmmakers, guests, juries, teachers, collaborators and, above all, students, the main audience of the Festival.

Thank you very much to each and everyone who joined us. We will meet again in edition 25!

This new edition of the Festival was possible thanks to the support of ACAU, Montevideo Audiovisual, Sala Zitarrosa, Cine MACA, Musitelli, La Mayor, Sony, Sin Sol, Vivace Post, Artemisa Lab, Cinescope Program, Acuaria, Maki Sushi, La Diaria Bacacay, Tazú, Bar Ciudadela, Vinos Santero, Radio Taxi 141, Montevideo Portal, TV Ciudad, CILECT, FEISAL and FilmFreeway.

More information: www.ecu.edu.uy / festival@ecu.edu.uy