Reggio Film Festival 2024 International Jury Award
composed of Boris Seewald, Marco Righi e Lorenzo Caravello
Room taken di T.J. O’Grady – Peyton (Irlanda, 2023)
Through poetic and silent staging, the author narrates the encounter between two basically distant and struggling individuals.
Sometimes mistakes open the way to fascinating and unexpected solutions: in fact, a series of random circumstances will soon create closeness and bonds between the two protagonists.
Audience Award
Room taken by T.J. O’Grady – Peyton (Ireland, 2023)
Emilia-Romagna Audience Award
La cosa più importante by Davide Ghizzoni (Italy, 2024)
Intercultural Visions
jury composed of Madi Ouedrago, Greta Tofanelli e Momar Gueye
Room taken di T.J. O’Grady – Peyton (Irlanda, 2023)
for having been able to represent many of the hot topics of contemporary society such as the discomfort experienced by those considered most marginalised, the disadvantages of disability, loneliness, the housing emergency and the inadequacy of social services, and for having conveyed a message of hope that focuses on the spontaneous exchange between two apparently unknown people and creates an opportunity for sharing values and space-time that builds social cohesion and in attempting to meet the needs of both makes up for the gaps left by public services and a society of individualism.
Special Mention to
Monochrome by Cédric Prévpst (France 2023)
for representing the construction of walls, socio-cultural barriers and aversion to diversity in a global world in which the use of new communication technologies should facilitate exchanges, reduce space-time distances and create new opportunities for encounters, where unfortunately individualism, prevarication and ignorance, understood as unawareness of one’s neighbour, often still prevail.
Secularity Award
Circle by Joung Yumi (South Korea 2024)
In its apparent simplicity, Circle gives us food for thought on many topics: including homologation, the limits that are imposed or that we impose on ourselves, the lack of critical and different thinking. It also suggests that it is good to break out of constraints: it is significant that the process of homologation is self-constraint dissolves when a child decides to go her own way. Perhaps it is in young people the hope of a critical thinking now precluded to adults?
Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version)
UNIMORE Award
decided by a jury composed of students from the Department of Communication and Economics, UNIMORE
Room taken di T.J. O’Grady – Peyton (Irlanda, 2023)
Menzione speciale UNIMORE
Komplikasjoner (Complications) di Ivar Aase (Norvegia 2023).
USAC Award
awarded by the students of University Studies Aborad Consortium
Room taken by T.J. O’Grady – Peyton (Ireland, 2023)
We felt this film did a great job at portraying the theme of the festival: We saw many errors made by the protagonist (male), the main being his inhabitance in a blind woman’s home without her knowing. However, a complex relationship between the man and woman builds as the film progresses, adding layers and depth to the story.
We believe this film most captured the theme of “errors” by showing how, while someone’s momentary mistakes may cause conflict or challenge, new opportunities for connections arise from our actions.
Premio Chierici
awarded by the girls and boys of the Liceo Chierici in Reggio Emilia
The Steak di Kiarash Dadgar (Iran, Canada 2023)
For the depth of the subject matter, the meticulous attention to direction, the quality of the photography and the refined care of the sound. In just eight minutes, the film manages to turn our perspective upside down and shake our passivity as spectators, prompting us to reflect on where we choose to position ourselves in the face of other people’s pain.
SNCCI Award Emilia-Romagna group
awarded by the jury composed of Barbara Belzini, Luisa Ceretto e Gianluca Stanzani
The Steak dby Kiarash Dadgar (Iran, Canada 2023)
In the intensity of the narrative, which unfolds in an almost uninterrupted shot-by-shot, the director has managed to condense drama and violence that burst into the everyday life of a mother and her daughter, disrupting their lives. Making use of a fixed scene – the director has experience in theatre productions – the skilful use of sound, with no dialogue, together with Banksy references (Balloon Girl) and Roy Andersson-like artificial atmospheres, the spectator becomes the fourth wall of the narration, generating a strident dichotomy of theatre/fiction and war/reality, both fruit of the human mind.
The jury also awarded a special mention to
Been there by Corina Schwingruber Ilić (Switzerland, 2023)
for the relentless but never judgmental gaze with which he recounts the invisible violence of mass tourism and the social imbalances of a contemporary where nothing exists unless it is filmed and photographed, where we have not been to a place unless we have immortalised ourselves there. An enlightening view of our behaviour.
Premio Sound
awarded to the best short film that stands out for a particularly original and expressive use of sound, be it music, speech or noise (in collaboration with RCF)
Next? by Christel Guibert (France 2024).
Alessandra Mizzi Award
awarded by AIMA – Italian Association for Alzheimer’s Disease Reggio Emilia
Somewhere in Between by Dahlia Nemlich (France 2023)
The jury chose this short film because it succeeds in being both intimate and choral, moving from the conjugal scale to the family scale, to the context of the Lebanese reality, marked by the war, which spares no one, adding the national drama to the personal one. The short film delicately and masterfully portrays the relationship between husband and wife, made up of affection, understanding, small gestures and memories, intense for her, partial for him, but no less important. The harmony that husband and wife have preserved is counterbalanced by the relationship with their daughter, whose way of caring, although moved by the same affection, fails to be as effective because it lacks the fundamental component of observation and listening. In other words, the film represents how the right approach is not necessarily the best one, if it considers life in terms of quantity and not quality.
It also represents the life of the primary caregiver who preserves the deep bond in small moments that often go unnoticed, while experiencing grief, loss and detachment on a daily basis, feeling the final farewell as an inevitable moment in the journey, while for others the loss is sudden and instinctively unacceptable. The obvious parallelism between war, which devastates despite the efforts made to preserve and rebuild, and illness, which destroys and reduces the life spent together into fragments, into shattered glass, well represents the feeling of powerlessness and the need to fight to preserve and retain all that is important.
For the reasons expressed above, for the beauty of the images and the poetry of the narrative, we believe that this work not only effectively photographs the condition of those who are confronted with this disease, but that it can also become a useful tool for elaboration, offering much food for thought.
FEDIC Award
awarded to the best Italian short film by the Italian Federation of Cineclubs
Benzina by Daniel Daquino (Italy 2023).
Aosta Award
awarded by the girls and boys of the Aosta School
Estonie sur Seine by Roger Gariépy (Canada 2024)
Leonardo Award
awarded by the girls and boys of the Leonardo Da Vinci School
Chat mort by Annie-Claude Caron and Danick Audet (Canada 2024)
It made an impression on some, but after all, the short film is entertaining. They liked it a lot because it is funny that the little girl speaks in a very ‘grown-up’ way when dealing with the cat, and that the parents think they have convinced their daughter that the cat is alive, while the daughter tries not to hurt their feelings, as they had tried to do for her.
Awards given by the Family Shorts International Jury
Ursula Ulmi, Alessandra Landini, Cristiana Valentini
International Jury Family Shorts Award
Nube by Diego Alonso Sánchez de la Barquera Estrada and Christian Arredondo Narvaez (Mexico, France, Hungary).
Motivation: «The Short is distinguished by various narrative levels, making it suitable for children and parents, splendid sound based on silences and pauses, and simple and straightforward 2d digital animation».
International Jury Family Shorts Special Awards ex aequo:
Leptir / Butterfly by Suncana Brkulj (Croatia, Denmark)
Motivation: «For originality in the use of mixed techniques: plasticine, stop motion and 2d animation and for the expressive quality of the sound. For talking about the importance of water to the life of a community»
Ahoj Léto / Hello Summer by Martin Smatana, Veronika Zacharová (Slovakia, Czech Republic, France)
Motivation: «For the modernity of animation, elegance of color, and originality in the use of the collage technique».
Special Mention
Kājām Gaisā / Upside Down by Dace Rīdūze (Latvia)
Motivation: «For enhancing the importance of different points of view through the revival of a traditional technique in the history of animation: stop motion».
Awards given by School Jury Family Shorts Award,
formed by pupils of the fifth grades of primary schools A. Negri, A. Bergonzi and G. Pascoli, of the Istituto Comprensivo Alessandro Manzoni of Reggio Emilia
School Jury Family Shorts Award
Coquille / Shellfish by Justine Aubert, Cassandra Bouton, Grégoire Callies, Maud Chesneau, Anna Danton, Loic Girault, Gatien Peyrude, Justine Raux (France)
Motivation: «For showing how important and possible it is to be friends even if the other person seems different to you. The short film engaged and entertained us, has beautiful graphics and detailed animation».
School Jury Family Shorts Special Award on Citizenship
Kadunud Sokid / The Mistery of Missing Socks by Oskar Lehemaa (Estonia)
Motivation: «Because it showed us how important it is to take care of those we care about, standing up for each other, with all our strength, without fear and with perseverance».
Audience Jury Family Shorts Award
Kanopos Ir Pačiūžos / Hoofs on Skate by Ignas Meilūnas (Lithuania).
Staff Family Shorts Special Mention
Été 96 /Summer 96 by Mathilde Bédouet (France).
Prizes of the competition for young videomakers promoted by the Service Officina Educativa – Youth Participation and Wellbeing of the Municipality of Reggio Emilia.
First prize: Right Line by Collettivo Frame
for the freshness of the staging and the formal precision with which the theme of error was elaborated in the creative process, through skilful handling of the artistic imagery.
Second Prize: Quando fuori piove by Luca Mallardo
Third Prize: Questo mondo non ha posto per me by Alan Giarnese
Special Mention: Il prossimo by Everybody Collective
The Unimore jury awarded Questo mondo non ha posto per me by Alan Giarnese and awarded a special mention to Right Line by Collettivo Frame.