UWPG Film Festival - Blog

There is so much that goes into a film, from the performances, to the writing, to the camera work, to the editing, that many awards come down to a dead heat. However, someone has to take home the crown, and this year at the UWPG Film Festival, the categories were stacked.

Day 2 of the 2021 UWPG Film Festival will be sure to leave you thinking. With the festival going online, viewers have the pleasure of seeing what student filmmakers from around the world can do.

Manitoba’s workforce development and training organization Film Training Manitoba (FTM) and the UWPG Film Festival are set to offer a deluxe Zoom training session as part of the festival on October 21 from 1 pm – 2 pm.

There is so much that goes into a film, from the performances, to the writing, to the camera work, to the editing, that many awards come down to a dead heat. However, someone has to take home the crown, and this year at the UWPG Film Festival, the categories were stacked.

It can feel both short and long. Like it passes in a blink, or that there is not enough, or by contrast like it crawls. In the case of Jean-Pierre Marchant, the 48-year difference between himself and his Chilean-immigrant father was – in the director’s words – a “gulf.”

Telling difficult stories is hard, but its harder when it’s your own. This was the task undertaken by Emelie Kastberg with her film Criteria of Rape, in which the Swedish filmmaker recounts her personal experience of being sexually assaulted while working in the film industry.

It has often been said that time is a flat circle. That no matter what we do, we are meant to follow the same paths throughout history. That the names and places may change, but the underlying experiences remain the same. This is felt powerfully in Isabel Jansson’s Heimat Europa, a film that tackles the universality of the female experience, the refugee journey to find ‘home’, and the way our past and future are closely intertwined.

Whether it’s a coming of age story from Germany that explores how female and refuge experiences transcend time, or a quirky Mexican superhero film that will make any comic nerd smirk, these films will delight.

Manitoba should be the perfect place to make a horror movie. For a few filmmakers at the 2020 UWPG Film Festival, their home province provided such a perfect backdrop.

With a night of animation behind us, let’s get ready for day four of the UWPG Film Festival, and more Canadian talent. Get ready to laugh, cry, and in the Halloween spirit, get spooked with these Made in Canada marvels.

Our culture impacts how we dress, how we act, what we believe, and how we interact and view one another. It is a box we’re placed in at birth, and according to Corpseland director and animator Yang Liu, “we have almost no possibility of getting out.”

Art comes to life on day 3 of the 2020 UWPG Film festival, with the Animated Shorts Program. Animators and visual artists from around the world have come together, producing films that will concern, delight, confound, and leave you entranced.

Sometimes titles mask a film, other times they tell you exactly what you need to know before the thing even begins. not everything has to work out falls into the second category.

If they’re around, you might want to grab your family for tonight’s lineup at the UWPG Film Festival. With the festival going online, viewers have the pleasure of seeing what student filmmakers from around the world can do, and for most, family was hard to ignore.

Never has death looked so beautiful.

Day one of the 2020 UWPG Film Festival kicks off with a bang. There will be films that make you cry, some that make you laugh, and some that make your skin crawl. It’s the best of home to start things off.

Whether it’s a story about a young drag queen in China, or a girl tracing her family’s history through a country they were forced from, or a successful self-help author dealing with the failing of her own life, the nominees for Most Promising Filmmaker at the 2020 UWPG Film Festival have impactful stories to tell.

Whether it’s a dreamlike picture of death, a father determining what he’s willing to sacrifice to give his children a good life, or a painter using art to process her past, this year’s race for Best Canadian Short will be a tight one.

On this episode of Let’s Talk About, Jason sits down with film­mak­er and direc­tor of the UWPG Film Fest, Miran­da Moroz, to talk film, fest, and every­thing in between.