Venice, March 20th 2025. Yesterday, the first day of Ca’ Foscari Short Film Festival reached its peak with Spanish director and screenwriter Pablo Berger’s masterclass, revolving around a conversation with John Bleasdale. The first part of the interview focused on what the director described as his “punk era”: his directorial debut with the short Mamá (1988) and his studies at New York University, discussing the importance of life experiences for creating stories. Following this, the director talked about the creative process related to his first feature film, Torremolinos 73 (2003), accompanied by the screening of a scene from the movie. The exchange continued with a talk about the long production of Blancanieves (2012) and the film’s worldwide successes. After a brief discussion on the magical realism of the tragicomedy Abracadabra (2017), in relation to Robot Dreams (2023), the public was invited to reflect, along with Berger, on the potential of animation and how it differentiates from live-action. The event was concluded on a lighter note when Berger shared some anecdotes about his experience at last year’s Oscars ceremony.
Today, during the second day of the Festival, the stars of the International Competition were twelve art pieces. A mix-up in a rehearsal room brings a group of funky androids and a singing bird to an inevitable clash in the Bosnian producer Fedor Marić’s animated short movie, Snima – REC. Next, Castaways, directed by the Mexican artist Andrea Saavedra de la Teja, deals with the delicate topic of growing too fast, through Miriam’s story. Claudio Agostini, from IED Rome, in Black, transforms a serious accident into an opportunity to rethink life and the way humans relate to one another. The competition proceeded with Son, directed by Kurdish-Iranian producer and director Saman Hosseinpuor, focusing on the difficult relationship between a mother and her son, thrown into a crisis by a sudden realization and the two characters’ divergent perspectives on life. The next screening was Island of Young-a, created by South Korean director Choi Seung-Hyun, a piece which explores teenage struggles, especially when a person’s inner world has been suddenly disrupted, making it necessary to find something to cling to. Screenings of the Competition continued with Sparks in the Darkness, a short by Russian director Vladislav Emelin, a noir thriller which leverages the pretext of a murder’s investigation to talk about morality, in a world where the border between black and white is not as marked as it might appear. The song of the sheep is a French animated short directed by Jules Marcel, Anaïs Castro de Angel, Juliette Bigo, Evan Lambert, Alex Le Ruyet, Jeanne Bigo and Anaïs Ledoux. This artwork tells the story of Frank, a hangover, grumpy shepherd living in the French Alps, who is looking for the thief who emptied his wine cellar. To follow, My mother is a cow, a short directed by the Brazilian producer Mora Passioni. The main character Mia is a twelve years old girl forced to move to her aunt’s ranch, in desperate search of maternal love. Then, it was the turn of Echoes of silent roosters by Carlotta Galilea, a short film revolving around the story of a family which is about to move. The piece, a contemporary portrait of the Basque Country, tells the story of an open wound about the people divided between a decayed past and a present which needs to be rebuilt. Following this, Polish director Cezary Orłowski presented his short Here for you, a story permeated by the love of a mother attempting to prepare her son, living with Down syndrome, for her departure. This short explores, with a delicate touch, topics such as death, fear of emptiness, love and disability. Our own shadow, by director Agustina Sánchez Gavier, is a fiction short movie set in an Argentinian city affected by ongoing deforestation. The plot develops within the real-life contemporary issue of environmental exploitation.
Additionally, during the second day of the Festival, three side competitions were presented: the CINIT Music Video Competition, the High School Competition and the “zero edition” of Short Med_Cine. The first competition showcased the best music videos created over the past year by students from film schools and universities from all over the world. The ten finalists come from nine different countries and explore universal and daily life themes, such as anxiety, nostalgia and past relationships. Among the most intriguing entries: Ojalà by Colombian filmmaker Sofia Alessandra Uzcátegui, which tells the story of a tuber falling in love with the sun, and A Song for Piassa by Ethiopian director Yonatan Ayallew, a moving reflection on memory, change and the power of art through Ethiopian jazz music set in Piassa, one of Addis Abeba's historical districts. The winner will be announced on Saturday's awards ceremony by a jury composed of Giovanni Bedeschi, Martina Buran and Giordano Giordani. The High School Competition is a contest dedicated to short films created by high school students worldwide, with a jury composed of Ca’ Foscari students. Among the ten competing works, notable entries include Cease, a video shot in a hospital by Iranian filmmaker Ali Bagheri, Arsa, a story about the consequences of virtual reality on a widow's life, shot by Swedish director Alexandru Cleo Bejenari and Italy's La scelta giusta by Enrico Adinolfi. The winner will be announced during Saturday's closing ceremony. The program Short Med_Cine, on the other hand, was created to raise awareness of rheumatic diseases through cinema. The “zero” edition of this project, coordinated by the Italian Society of Rheumatology (SIR) and the Institute of the History of Rheumatology (ISR), uses cinema as a means to convey both a social and medical message. The eight finalist short films (Far l’Amore by Armenteros, Pittura by Lauriol, Blue Sheep by Deng, Isola by Fo, The Ceiling of Wishes by Bahmani, Nelle Mie Mani by Vulcano, Il Compleanno by Mastinu and Pura by Méndez) were evaluated by a jury of doctors and professors: SIR councilors Dr. Marta Favero, Prof. Sabrina Paolino, Dr. Maria Grazia Ferrucci and Prof. Elena Bartoloni Bocci, along with SIR President Andrea Doria and ISR President Leonardo Punzi. Following the screening of the finalist short films, the winner was announced: Pittura by French director Adam Lauriol, awarded “for portraying a severly debilitating disability while addressing the very timely topic of the human-machine relationship”.
Lastly, the Special Jury Program took place during the afternoon, where the three members of the International Competition jury met the audience.
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