Hooked on Illusions

Country: GERMANY Year: 2023 Duration: 4 mins.

Sinopsys: Standing on a footbridge in the middle of the night, an old man fishes the moon's reflection and dives into it. Inside, he sees a colourful but ominous dreamscape. Instead of distracting him from his grey reality, the dreams confront him with his fears. But in the darkest moment, the fisherman figures out a way to escape his hopeless situation.

Credits:

Direction: Laura Isabel Schneider

Writers: Laura Isabel Schneider

Production: Anne-Kathrin Seemann

Animation: Laura Isabel Schneider

Music: Nora Beyer

Sound: Frida Lehmann, Anastasiia Nasonkina

Distribution: Film University Babelsberg KONRAD WOLF

Muscle Man in: Metal Mayhem

Country: BELGIUM Year: 2023 Duration: 8 mins.

Sinopsys: Muscle Man, the world's cleanest superhero, embarks on a thrilling battle against a giant robot determined to reduce the city to rubble, but his obsession with order could lead him to his downfall.

Credits:

Direction: Nicolas Laurent Gemoets

Writers: nicolas gemoets

Production: Vincent Gilot

Animation: nicolas gemoets

Music: Gwenaël Mario Grisi, Michel Duprez

Sound: Timothée Maillot

Distribution: Vincent Gilot

The Nighthawk Is Not a Hawk

Country: CHINA, JAPAN Year: 2023 Duration: 8 mins.

Sinopsys: The Nighthawk is an ugly bird. So ugly that everyone thinks he stole the name and the Hawk demands that he relinquish it. The Nighthawk cannot accept this, but he also realizes that he's not much different from the Hawk.

Credits:

Direction: Wang Junjie

Writers: JUNJIE WANG

Production: Taruto FUYAMA

Animation: Junjie WANG,Wen PANG,Shengxue SHI

Music: Zhixuan SHI

Sound: Nao TAWARATSUMIDA

Distribution: Tokyo University of the Arts, Graduate School of film and new media

Whatman

Country: CZECHIA Year: 2023 Duration: 8 mins.

Sinopsys: Resignation to any kind of civic engagement. Whatman is a guy, who doesn't want to read, doesn't want to see and preferably doesn't want to bother with anything anymore. He just wants to live inside of his safe house. But as a result, with this hidden from the news of the world, he gradually begins to sacrifice not only his property, his space, but also his freedom.

Credits:

Direction: Nika Zinoveva

The Sun is Bad

Country: HONG KONG, UNITED STATES OF AMERICA Year: 2023 Duration: 3 mins.

Sinopsys: Set in Hong Kong during the late 80s, a temperamental girl tries to destroy the sun and stop it from melting her city using toys and whatever she has.

Credits:

Direction: Sum Yee Rachel Mow

Writers: Rachel Mow

Production: Ivan Chui

Animation: Rachel Mow, Ivan Chui, Liren Sun, Chenrui Lan, Quinn Marsh, Daya Lee, Paul Goguen, Claude Lau, Cas Isaac, Kian Sherritt, Montana Ignacio

Music: Johnathan Yang

Sound: Jeremy Ben Ammar

On the 8th Day

Country: FRANCE Year: 2023 Duration: 8 mins.

Sinopsys: It took 7 days to create the world, it only took one to disrupt its balance.

Credits:

Direction: Agathe Sénéchal, Alicia Massez, Elise Debruyne, Flavie Carin, Théo Duhautois

Writers: Agathe Sénéchal, Alicia Massez, Elise Debruyne, Flavie Carin, Théo Duhautois

Production: Carlos De Carvalho (Pôle 3D)

Animation: Flavie Carin

Music: Thomas Peyrounette

Sound: Elise Debruyne

Distribution: Patrick De Carvalho (Je Regarde)

LA NOTTE

Country: ITALY Year: 2023 Duration: 7 mins.

Sinopsys: Based on concert RV 439 “La Notte” by A. Vivaldi. Carnival in Venice: Pulcinella attempts to slip into a VIP party, without too much success. Amidst lavish masks, food triumphs and sensual women, his dream of the rich and famous turns into a nightmare, revealing to him the priceless value of his simple but authentic life.

Credits:

Direction: Martina Generali

Writers: Simone Pratola

Production: Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia, sede Piemonte - Animazione

Animation: Martina Generali, Simone Pratola, Francesca Sofia Rosso

Music: Antonio Vivaldi, concerto RV 439 “La Notte” arrangement-conductor: Fulvio Chiara flute: Giorgio Secchi performed by Fondazione Fossano Musica;

Sound: Paolo Armao

To be a Seed

Country: MEXICO Year: 2023 Duration: 6 mins.

Sinopsys: In a small town women are disappearing, vanishing into dust. Through a poetic narrative we accompany a group of women/witches, their relationship with the earth and nature, and their freedom which allows them to turn into birds and fly. However, the increasing violence is drying out their lands and killing the women. A poetic retelling of a 17th century tale of witchcraft in our 21st century; a story about women, witches, gender violence, about women’s strength and resistance.

Credits:

Direction: Julia Granillo Tostado

Summer Rain

Country: SWITZERLAND Year: 2023 Duration: 5 mins.

Sinopsys: Quincy, an imaginative young girl, spends a peaceful childhood with her parents. However, when her mother falls ill, Quincy has to cope with the changes in her everyday life. She doesn‘t quite grasp the situation and even after the her mother‘s death, as she is confronted with her father‘s grief, she doesn‘t stop seeing the world through her naïve and childlike eyes.

Credits:

Direction: Marlene Low, Julia Krummenacher, Johanna Kern

Writers: Marlene Low

Production: Production: HSLU Design & Kunst / BA Animation Jürgen Haas, Co-production: Schweizer Radio und Fernsehen SRF, Gabriela Bloch-Steinmann

Animation: Marlene Low, Julia Krummenacher, Johanna Kern, Luwam Ghebrehiwet

Music: Reina Burkhalter

Sound: Sounddesign: Noah Lüthi, Jérémie Itty, Emanuel Strehler

Distribution: HSLU Design & Kunst / BA Animation, contact: Chantal Molleur

Homemaker

Country: UNITED KINGDOM Year: 2023 Duration: 9 mins.

Sinopsys: Renee loses herself in a controlling relationship and the abuse she suffers gets worse until she is utterly trapped. Renee's only hope of escape is to understand that she deserves more than to be his property.

Credits:

Direction: Ciara Kerr

Writers: Chase Olivarius-McAllister

Production: Cristina Isgrò

Music: Catherine Hillier

Sound: Conor Thompson

Distribution: National Film and Television School

The Nectar Instead

Country: UNITED STATES OF AMERICA Year: 2023 Duration: 4 mins.

Sinopsys: A young fly gets trapped in the fly trap in the stop-motion studio only to have the existential realization that it spent its entire life chasing after the wrong thing.

Credits:

Direction: Yoo Lee

Writers: Yoo Lee

Production: Yoo Lee

Animation: Blake Derksen

Music: Joseph Stevens

Sound: Matthew Schoenfeld

Distribution: University of Southern California