UWPGFF announces nominees for “Best International Short” at 2020 Festival
Social commentary from diverse submissions shows how connected we are
cw: discussion of sexual assault
Jason Pchajek, staff writer
No matter where you’re from, film can provide a window into your cultural world, and among the nominees for UWPG Film Fest’s Best International Short award this sentiment holds true.
With COVID-19 forcing the festival online, the decision to open submissions to an international base was met with an immensely positive response. While typical film powerhouses of the United Kingdom, Germany, Italy, and India well represented, so too were smaller filmmaking nations like Austria, Argentina, and Belarus.
These new perspectives not only brought more talent to the festival, but brought unique views on the world, and even more unique stories not typically seen in Canada. The story of an Iranian mother selling fish in the street to support her disabled son, was placed alongside a serious discussion about the trauma of sexual assault and how those pains continue.
Then there was a story of a criminal father confronted by a desire to change, juxtaposed with the experience of a young woman in middle-class India.
No matter where you look, this year’s nominees will have something for everyone.
Criteria of Rape – Sweden
First, we have a story from Sweden that is more important than ever. In the age of #MeToo, Harvey Weinstein, and changing perceptions around consent, Criteria of Rape shines a humanizing light on victims of sexual assault.
This film will leave you shaken. This film will leave you in tears. This film will make you question why people don’t believe survivors. And that is the point.
In Criteria of Rape, Emelie Kastberg documents her own experience of sexual assault in the industry. Documentary-style interview footage is interlaced with grainy home movies as Kastberg narrates her own story, showing the audience why survivors do not report, why they feel powerless, and why the system is stacked in the offender’s favor.
As Kastberg herself states in the film “I want to be able to tell the world […] that I ran away, I bit him, I screamed. That I did all the criteria for it to be defined as rape. According to what society defines it as. I want to be able to say that.
“And when I can’t say that, I feel so ashamed over myself because […] then it’s like I didn’t do enough.”
Maybe, as the film suggests, we aren’t asking the right questions as a society. Instead of interrogating the victim, placing our criteria on them, maybe we should look in the other direction. Maybe if we question the offender, we’ll get the answers we truly need.
Drifter – India
What is a woman’s role? What spaces can women occupy in society? In the modern world, how does the older generation view the younger?
Drifter sets out to provide a window into this world, focusing on a young middle-class woman in small-town India. She is seen, but not heard. She is the pride of her family, but only if she does as she’s told, goes where she’s told, and does not speak. She is treated as a commodity more than a person.
She is herself a drifter, flowing through her home life, only feeling free outside the walls of her own home, standing amongst her peers. Perhaps tradition has become incongruent with modern life. Perhaps the home must change as much as the world outside its protective walls.
Drifter’s story is one that anyone in the modern world can understand. Despite the difference in language, culture, and setting, its commentary on gender roles, the tactical dance of middle-class life, and the desire for young people to be free, is something felt in every first-world nation.
Quiet, slow, and contemplative. Drifter is the perfect example of how underrated Indian filmmaking talent has become.
Ok India, we’re listening.
Parental – Spain
We’ve all seen crime films. Stories where someone must balance their morals with their need to survive. Films where a life of crime causes stress in a person’s family life. But rarely do we see a film where those lines are so harshly blurred.
Then distill it down to 11 minutes and you’ve got Parental.
Given 12 hours freedom from prison, Miguel must find a way to traffic a shipment of cocaine into France. But over a lunchtime chat with his son, Miguel is confronted by the fact that life is moving at lightspeed while he’s trapped behind bars, and maybe he needs to change with it.
With style and visual flare to match anything coming out of Hollywood today. Antonio Galarzo’s film feels like something with 10-times the budget. This 11-minute slice would be right at home as part of a Netflix series, or 3-hour crime film, but Galarzo provides it here in a self-contained narrative with believable and rich characters.
Exploring the complex world of fatherhood, and how it shapes and reshapes us, even without us knowing it, Parental offers a poignant and personal take on crime.
Nowhere is this more apparent than the final line, “You just be a good father, ok?”
Exist – Iran
From an experience of fatherhood in Spain, to the experience of motherhood in Iran.
Exist is short, clocking in at just under 5 minutes long, but packs its runtime so effectively you’ll swear it was twice the length. The film is gorgeous to behold, transitioning from the smoke-filled industrial areas of the country to sprawling nature, as we get a slice-of-life peek at a poor mother selling fish at the side of a busy highway to buy oxygen for her sick son.
In just 4 minutes and 48 seconds, director Payam Shadniya perfectly captures the simple narrative. This mother makes this journey every day, catching fish in the water near her home, carting it to the urban centre, getting enough money to purchase a tank of oxygen, then carting it back home to start the journey afresh.
She has no life other than ensuring her son can breathe. That he can live. Without mothers, where would we be?
Road – Belarus
Lastly, we have the strangest film of the bunch. While the previous four films provided very real scenarios, many of which every viewer can understand, the magic of Kirill Khaletsky’s Road is that it could be many things to many different people.
The structure is simple: A young man stands at the side of a road, trying to figure out a way to cross. But the wonderful thing, is that watching it, there’s so much more to it. It’s nearly impossible to describe something surreal like Road.
Presented in black and white, the film is visually beautiful, the acting is wonderful, and the costuming and presentation makes you feel like this scenario takes place outside time itself.
Perhaps Khaletsky said it best, “It doesn't matter when this story took place and where, only people are important and what everyone in the audience will discover for [themselves] while watching.”
Did I mention he’s 19? Look out for this young man.