Every year, some 60 works are selected from nearly 4,000 entries to compete in the world’s oldest short film competition. This programme now brings together some of the best and most interesting works featured in the 2014 Oberhausen International Competition. On show are five award-winning international films that revolve around the serious themes of memory, loneliness and isolation, but always with some bright, positive highlights. The grand cinema of the short form is here to be discovered in a specially selected programme.
Returning to Aeolus Street
(Epistrofi Stin Odo Aiolu)
Dir Maria Kourkouta/FR GR 2013/14 mins/Greek wEng ST
This found footage film is an audio-visual collage of a journey through modern Greece and through downtown Athens.
Non-Euclidean Geometry
(Neeuklidinė Geometrija)
Dirs Skirmanta Jakaitė & Solveiga Masteikaitė/LT 2013/11 mins/Silent
Where does love go when lovers break apart? Or when they stay together? What becomes of our love after death? Is it really that important or simply inevitable?
A Million Miles Away
Dir Jennifer Reeder/US 2014/28 mins
An adult woman on the edge of failing and a pack of teenage girls simultaneously experience a supernatural version of coming-of-age. The transformation is equal parts tense and tender.
Exorcise Me
Dir Ang Sookoon/ SG 2013/3 mins/Silent
Exorcise Me addresses coming-of-age anxiety, teenage alienation and the confusing phase between childhood and adulthood.
Gangster Backstage
Dir Teboho Edkins/FR ZA 2013/38 mins
During a casting session in South Africa, Teboho Edkins asks real gangsters to get on stage and play their everyday life.