European Film Academy was the initiative of a group of Europe’s finest filmmakers brought together on the occasion of the first European Film Award’s ceremony held in November 1988. It was officially founded in 1989 as the European Cinema Society by its first president Ingmar Bergman and 40 filmmakers, to advance the interests of the European film industry. Wim Wenders, Agnieszka Holland and Juliette Binoche followed in Bergman’s footsteps as Presidents of the Academy. The current chairman of the Board is Mike Downey, and Matthijs Wouter Knol has been appointed CEO and Director. The European Film Academy seeks to support and connect its 4,600 members and promote their work. Positioning itself as a leading European organization within the industry, it strives to unite everyone who loves European cinema, culminating annually in the European Film Awards.
The European Film Academy’s short film tour brings the selection of 5 short films with a candidacy for the European Film Awards 2023.
FILMS:
Aqueronte, Manuel Muñoz Rivas, Spain, 2023., 27’
Passengers cross a river on a ferry. Some of them wait in silence for time to pass, some observe the other passengers, and some chat to liven up the voyage.
Hardly Working, Susanna Flock, Leonhard Müllner, Robin Klengel, Michael Stumpf, Austria, 2022., 21’
Hardly Working sheds a limelight on the very characters that normally remain in the background of video games: NPCs. They are non-player characters that populate the digital world as extras to create the appearance of normality. A laundress, a stable boy, a street sweeper and a carpenter are observed with ethnographic precision. They are Sisyphus machines, whose labour routines, activity patterns as well as bugs and malfunctions paint a vivid analogy for work under capitalism.
Daydreaming so Vividly About our Spanish Holidays, Christian Avilés, Spain, 2022., 24’
Driven by their desire for light and warmth, British teenagers take a trip to the Balearic Islands. They must absorb the sun and store it in their bodies to take it back to their cloud-covered kingdom.
Flores del otro patio, Jorge Cadena, Switzerland, Colobmia, 2022., 16’
In the Colombian Caribbean, a group of queer activists practice a militancy that challenges heteropatriarchal norms while engaging in other causes to collectively fight against the various social injustices that plague the region. When the management of the country's largest coal mine announces a press conference to promote the development of mining, the group prepares to carry out a denunciatory performative action ... and resolutely queer.
27, Flóra Anna Buda, France, Hungary, 2023., 10’
Alice is 27 years old today. Even though she is suffocating a bit, she still lives with her parents and tends to live in her dreams to escape her dreary everyday life. After a psychedelic party on a factory roof, she has a serious drunken bike accident. Will this give her the courage to become an adult?
*films are in original language with English subtitles
