Press Release from International Short Film Festival Leuven
‘C’est dimanche’ of French film maker Samir Guesni received the Jury Award of the European Short Film Competition of the International Short Film Festival Leuven. The CANVAS Audience Award in this competition went to Romanian Gabriel Sirbu’s ‘Life’s hard’. The festival’s fifteenth edition welcomed over 8,000 visitors, a bit more than last year.
In the Flemish Short Film Competition, the Jury proclaimed Marc James Roels’ ‘A gentle creature’ the winner. The audience voted for Philippe Verkinderen’s ‘Een kleine duw’ as their favorite. The award for the Best Debut (student prize) went to ‘Siemiany’ of Philip James McGoldrick. Koen De Koninck won the competition for Short Animated Films with his film ‘Opgejut’. During the week, Joe Vanhoutteghem’s ‘Blonde Fire’ (The Hickey Underworld) received the SABAM Award, while Pim Algoed’s ‘How to Enrich Yourself by Driving Women into Emotional and Financial Bankruptcy’ won the Humo Award.
As every year, the Flanders Audio-visual Fund awarded Wildcards to newly graduated film makers who made the best graduating project. Within the category of fiction, Gilles Coulier (Ijsland) and Gust Van den Berghe (En waar de sterre bleef stille staan) each received 60,000 euros to realize a new project, coached by a professional. In the category of documentary, Eva Küpper (What’s in an Name) and Jason Boënne (Het Kleine Leger van de Zilveren Berg) each received 40,000 euros. Pim Algoed’s short film that won the Humo-award was, for example, the result of such a Wildcard.