68th International Short Film Festival Oberhausen, 30 April – 9 May 2022
Oberhausen 2022 online competitions are complete
Online exclusive from 30 April to 3 May
44 films from 31 countries have been selected for the two online competitions of the upcoming 68th International Short Film Festival Oberhausen. 34 works will compete in the International Online Competition, ten in the German Online Competition. A strong theme in both competitions are films examining current political issues or looking back on historic events. Both competitions will be shown online only from 30 April to 3 May 2022; the second part of this year’s Festival, whose last two editions took place online due to the pandemic, will start on 4 May in the Oberhausen cinemas. Both competitions were introduced in 2021 as part of the long-term re-orientation of Oberhausen as a hybrid festival.
International Online Competition
Featuring 34 films from 31 countries, including eight world premieres, the International Online Competition offers a concentrated look at international short film production across the globe, from Argentina to China, from the US to Thailand. Films from Gabon, Qatar or Myanmar, among others, open windows on smaller and rarely presented film countries. Around half the films were made by women.
A number of productions play with classical film genres: Can You Still Feel the Butterflies? (Radek Brousil, Czech Republic), Max et les étranges (Max and the Freaks, Nathan Clement, Switzerland), Punctured Sky (Jon Rafman, USA) or zhezhou (herstory, Zhang Yui, China) all experiment with elements of fantasy film, while Days of the New (Keith Deligero, Philippines) evokes a dystopian thriller and Sad Cowboy Platonic Love (Ciel Sourdeau, Switzerland) mixes fantasy and western elements.
Many of the films address current political issues or historic events. Walkway (Sudha Padmaja Francis) from India, for example, deals with the rights of women in public space; the Thai-British coproduction Notes from the Periphery (Tulapop Saenjaroen) uses the Thai port of Laem Chabang for an examination of who owns public spaces. Ava mocoi, os gêmeos (Ava Mocoi, the Twins, Luiza Calagian and Vinicius Toro) take up the example of a Guaraní village and its struggle for its culture and territory in the face of encroaching soy plantations. In THE DRESS, Ken Kobland takes an art installation as a starting point for a re-examination of the devastating Triangle Waist factory fire in New Yorkin 1911. Abrir Monte (Open Mountain, María Arias Rojas) recalls the forgotten revolution of a group of shoemakers, the “Bolsheviks of Líbano Tolima” in Colombia in 1929, while Meshy Koplevitch looks back on the Yom Kippur War in her documentary animation 73.
German Online Competition
Ten works have been selected for this year’s German Online Competition, seven of them made by women. Half of the titles come from film or art schools. Many works in this competition, too, find unusual and powerful ways to depict political issues or historical events.
Pavel Mozhar in Handbuch (Handbook), for example, uses reports from Belarus for his lucid analysis of universal patterns of repression, re-enacted in his apartment in Berlin. Two very different films deal with uranium mining in the former GDR: Alex Gerbaulet and Mareike Bernien in their impressive Sonne Unter Tage (Sun Under Ground) follow the cycle of uranium from the GDR mines to the USSR, where it was exported, until its return after the Tchernobyl disaster. Sophie Hilbert in Strahlend grüne Wiese (Radiant Green Field) uses documentary and performance elements to examine its effects on the people. Katrin Winkler in you cannot trust the colours takes a critical look at colonialism through colorized or tinted images, Vanessa Gravenor’s experimental fiction Paper Swallows Rock is a personal story of the aftermath of the Paris Bataclan terror attack in 2015.
The Jury of the German Online Competition:
Jens Pecho, filmmaker, Berlin
Christine Rüffert, curator, Berlin
Can Sungu, curator, Berlin
Prizes worth a total of 15,500 euros will be awarded in the two competitions. The online presentation of the films will be accompanied by filmmakers’ statements; in addition, all filmmakers will be invited to Oberhausen. All awards will be announced on 9 May 2022 together with the awards of the on-site competitions.
Complete list of all selected films here.
Ticket sales for the online competition open in early April on www.kurzfilmtage.de
68th International Short Film Festival Oberhausen, 30 April – 9 May 2022
The upcoming Oberhausen Festival will take place as a hybrid festival. The online sections, presented from 30 April to 3 May, will be followed by the on-site festival, which opens on 4 May. The festival’s traditional competitions – International, German, NRW, Children’s and Youth Films and the MuVi Award – will take place in the cinemas, as well as numerous thematic programmes and filmmaker profiles.
www.kurzfilmtage.de
Oberhausen, 15 February 2022
Press contact: Sabine Niewalda, T +49 (0)208 825-3073, niewalda(at)kurzfilmtage.de