Search form

Sundance Film Festival Announces 2015 Short Film Program

Thirteen animated shorts are selected for the 2015 Sundance Film Festival Short Film program.

Park City, UT -- Sundance Institute announced on Tuesday the program of short films selected to screen at the 2015 Sundance Film Festival, January 22 to February 1 in Park City, Salt Lake City, Ogden and Sundance, Utah. The 2015 Short Film program -- presented by YouTube -- is comprised of 60 short films selected from 8,061 submissions, including 13 animated shorts. The Festival is the centerpiece of the year-round public programs for the Institute, which also hosts 24 residency labs and grants more than $2.5 million to independent artists each year.

“This year's short filmmakers have broken through their limited timeframe with a high level of artistry and story that will resonate with audiences long after each film has ended,” said Mike Plante, Senior Programmer for the Sundance Film Festival.

See below for the list of animated shorts selected for the 2015 program, and head over to the Sundance website for the full lineup:

ANIMATED SHORT FILMS

  • Bath House / Sweden (Director: Niki Lindroth von Bahr, Screenwriter: Jerker Virdborg) — Six characters meet in a public bathhouse: the pedant bathhouse manager, a couple with a strange way of communicating and a gang with shady intentions. Something goes wrong.
  • Beach Flags / France (Director and screenwriter: Sarah Saidan) — Vida, a young Iranian lifeguard, is determined to be the one to participate in an international competition in Australia. However, when Sareh, who is as fast and talented as her, joins the team, Vida faces an unexpected situation.
  • The Horse Raised By Spheres / U.S.A., Ireland (Director and screenwriter: David OReilly) — Horse ponders his loneliness.
  • Mynarski Death Plummet / Canada (Director and screenwriter: Matthew Rankin) — A completely handmade historical micro-epic combining wartime aviation melodrama with classical and avant-garde animation techniques, Mynarski Death Plummet is a psychedelic photo-chemical war picture on the themes of self-sacrifice, immortality, and jellyfish.
  • OM Rider / U.S.A. (Director and screenwriter: Takeshi Murata) — In a vast desert bathed in neon hues, a misfit werewolf tears full speed ahead over forbidding terrain while his hoary counterpart awaits.
  • Palm Rot / U.S.A. (Director and screenwriter: Ryan Gillis) — An old Florida fumigator discovers a mysterious crate in the Everglades that ruins his day.
  • Storm hits jacket / France (Director and screenwriter: Paul Cabon) — A storm reaches the shores of Brittany. Nature goes crazy, two young scientists get caught up in the chaos. Espionage, romantic tension and mysterious events clash with enthusiasm and randomness.
  • The Sun Like a Big Dark Animal / U.S.A. (Directors: Christina Felisgrau, Ronnie Rivera, Screenwriters: Ronnie Rivera, Bernardo Britto) — A computer and a woman fall in love, only to be torn apart because of their inappropriate feelings for each other.
  • Symphony no. 42 / Hungary (Director and screenwriter: Réka Bucsi) — The film applies an unconventional narrative. It presents a subjective world through 47 scenes. Small events, interlaced by associations, express the irrational coherence of our surroundings. The surreal situations are based on the interactions of humans and nature.
  • teeth / United Kingdom, U.S.A., Hungary (Directors and screenwriters: Daniel Gray, Tom Brown) — Things of worth are often neglected in favor of that which is more immediately gratifying. Unfortunately, things that are neglected are often lost forever. In teeth, a misguided and intensely focused man's life is chronicled through his oral obsessions.
  • Tupilaq / Denmark (Director and screenwriter: Jakob Maqe) — The Tupilaq is both a symbol of the spirit of a forefather and a curse. This personal and moving short film revolves around the themes of cultural alienation, abuse and the contrast between mythological greenlandic nature and western urban culture.
  • Two Films About Loneliness / United Kingdom (Directors and screenwriters: William Bishop-Stephens, Christopher Eales) — A split screen separates the worlds of Jonathan Smallman, who is recording his online dating profile, and Philip Button, Internet chef and hamster, who is noisily recording his new cooking video.
  • World of Tomorrow / U.S.A. (Director and screenwriter: Don Hertzfeldt) — A little girl is taken on a mind-bending tour of the distant future.

The Sundance Film Festival -- a program of the non-profit Sundance Institute -- has introduced global audiences to some of the most groundbreaking films of the past three decades, including Whiplash, Boyhood, Rich Hill, Beasts of the Southern Wild, Fruitvale Station, Little Miss Sunshine, sex, lies, and videotape, Reservoir Dogs, Hedwig and the Angry Inch, An Inconvenient Truth, Precious and Napoleon Dynamite, and through its New Frontier initiative has showcased groundbreaking media works by artists and creative technologists including Chris Milk, Doug Aitken, Palmer Luckey, Klip Collective and Nonny de la Pena.

Source: The Sundance Film Festival

Jennifer Wolfe's picture

Formerly Editor-in-Chief of Animation World Network, Jennifer Wolfe has worked in the Media & Entertainment industry as a writer and PR professional since 2003.