"No idea where we are." Remember raves? Anyone miss them? After watching this short film, you might be glad they're not happening much anymore. Not always the best experience. Acid Rain is an animated short from Poland made by animation filmmaker Tomek Popakul. This first premiered in 2019 and we missed it then, but thanks to Short of the Week we have a chance to experience it now. When a runaway teenage girl meets Skinny, a peculiar drug dealer, the infatuation quickly shows its darker side. "With a sound design as impressive as its visuals, director Tomek Popakul has created an animated trip with sociopolitical layers and great beats." This girl ends up on an intense trip with psychedelic mushrooms, traveling to an underground rave in the forest where she encounters all kinds of strange people. The voice cast features Daria Bułka, Piotr Bułka, & Maciej Miszczak. It' a trippy short that runs long,...
- 11/10/2023
- by Alex Billington
- firstshowing.net
Georgian filmmaker Elene Naveriani clinched the Best Feature Award in the main international competition of the 29th Sarajevo Film Festival with her latest pic Blackbird Blackbird Blackberry. The award comes with a €16,000 cash prize.
The film also picked up the Best Actress award for Ekaterine Chavleishvili, which comes with a €2,500 cash prize. Overall, eleven films battled it out in the main competition, and Mia Wasikowska’s jury—including MoMA Film Head Josh Siegel, actor Zlatko Burić, actress Danica Ćurčić, and director Juraj Lerotić, spread the love quite widely.
The Ukrainian pic La Palisiada won the Best Director Award for Philip Sotnychenko, while Jovan Ginić won the Best Actor prize for the Serbian film Lost Country. In the festival’s documentary section, the top prize went to Bottlemen by Slovenian director Nemanja Vojinović.
Check out the full list of winners below:
Honorary Heart of Sarajevo
Mark Cousins, director and screenwriter
Lynne Ramsay,...
The film also picked up the Best Actress award for Ekaterine Chavleishvili, which comes with a €2,500 cash prize. Overall, eleven films battled it out in the main competition, and Mia Wasikowska’s jury—including MoMA Film Head Josh Siegel, actor Zlatko Burić, actress Danica Ćurčić, and director Juraj Lerotić, spread the love quite widely.
The Ukrainian pic La Palisiada won the Best Director Award for Philip Sotnychenko, while Jovan Ginić won the Best Actor prize for the Serbian film Lost Country. In the festival’s documentary section, the top prize went to Bottlemen by Slovenian director Nemanja Vojinović.
Check out the full list of winners below:
Honorary Heart of Sarajevo
Mark Cousins, director and screenwriter
Lynne Ramsay,...
- 8/19/2023
- by Zac Ntim
- Deadline Film + TV
It’s Freudian, it’s existential, it’s surreal: in Kim Hye-mi’s debut feature film “Climbing,” internal conflict takes over the screen. Choi Se-hyeon, a successful rock climber, finds out one day that she is pregnant. Much to her husband’s chagrin, she loses the baby in a car accident. That’s about as clear as the story gets, however. Consciousness and time flow into each other as we see Se-hyeon sink deeper into an internal battlefield of trauma. The thirst for motherhood and career-driven success mess with our protagonist, as we venture into the blood, guts, and gore of alternative timelines where she could (and could not have) had the baby.
In recognition of the film’s nomination for Annecy’s Contrechamps selection, we sit down with director Kim Hye-mi over Zoom. For a film that is so freely violent, she’s surprisingly reserved. She selects her words...
In recognition of the film’s nomination for Annecy’s Contrechamps selection, we sit down with director Kim Hye-mi over Zoom. For a film that is so freely violent, she’s surprisingly reserved. She selects her words...
- 7/1/2021
- by Grace Han
- AsianMoviePulse
More than 100 titles to be made available at launch.
A global streaming platform dedicated to feature documentaries and shorts is set to launch on February 17 titled Filmpixs.
The new subscription-based platform will spotlight social impact stories and new voices in filmmaking. It is overseen by Danish outfit Hf Productions, whose credits include Oscar shortlisted Women Of The Gulag and 2020 SXSW Grand Jury Prize winner Beautiful Something Left Behind.
Films selected for Cannes, Toronto, Venice and Sundance are among those being lined up for the streamer.
Hf Productions’ CEO Henrik Friis and executive producer Benn Wiebe will curate the platform, which...
A global streaming platform dedicated to feature documentaries and shorts is set to launch on February 17 titled Filmpixs.
The new subscription-based platform will spotlight social impact stories and new voices in filmmaking. It is overseen by Danish outfit Hf Productions, whose credits include Oscar shortlisted Women Of The Gulag and 2020 SXSW Grand Jury Prize winner Beautiful Something Left Behind.
Films selected for Cannes, Toronto, Venice and Sundance are among those being lined up for the streamer.
Hf Productions’ CEO Henrik Friis and executive producer Benn Wiebe will curate the platform, which...
- 1/28/2021
- by Michael Rosser
- ScreenDaily
The November 2020 lineup for The Criterion Channel has been unveiled, toplined by a Claire Denis retrospective, including the brand-new restoration of Beau travail, along with Chocolat, No Fear, No Die, Nenette and Boni, Towards Mathilde, 35 Shots of Rum, and White Material.
There will also be a series celebrating 30 years of The Film Foundation, featuring a new interview with Martin Scorsese by Ari Aster, as well as a number of their most essential restorations, including films by Jia Zhangke, Ritwik Ghatak, Luchino Visconti, Shirley Clarke, Med Hondo, and more.
There’s also David Lynch’s new restoration of The Elephant Man, retrospectives dedicated to Ngozi Onwurah, Nadav Lapid, and Terence Nance, a new edition of the series Queersighted titled Queer Fear, featuring a new conversation between series programmer Michael Koresky and filmmaker and critic Farihah Zaman, and much more.
See the lineup below and learn more on the official site.
There will also be a series celebrating 30 years of The Film Foundation, featuring a new interview with Martin Scorsese by Ari Aster, as well as a number of their most essential restorations, including films by Jia Zhangke, Ritwik Ghatak, Luchino Visconti, Shirley Clarke, Med Hondo, and more.
There’s also David Lynch’s new restoration of The Elephant Man, retrospectives dedicated to Ngozi Onwurah, Nadav Lapid, and Terence Nance, a new edition of the series Queersighted titled Queer Fear, featuring a new conversation between series programmer Michael Koresky and filmmaker and critic Farihah Zaman, and much more.
See the lineup below and learn more on the official site.
- 10/27/2020
- by Leonard Pearce
- The Film Stage
A self-proclaimed “partygoer” with sympathetic ties to Poland’s rave scene, Tomek Popakul crafted a visceral, hallucinatory portrait of a pivotal moment for Eastern Europe in his latest animated short, Acid Rain.
“The fall of Communism was at the same time when the rave scene exploded and came to Eastern Europe, in this wave of freedom, and colors, and very loud electric music,” Popakul explains. “Everything was very fresh, and nobody knew what it was yet; everything was much more Diy culture, based on a human network, than the scene is now, which is much more commercialized.”
Nominated for the Annie Award for Best Animated Short Subject, Acid Rain follows Young, a woman who connects with an unstable weirdo named Skinny, after running away from her depressing hometown. Joining Skinny in his van as he goes about criminal business proceedings, Young embarks on a trippy journey with no destination, experiencing the world through a trippy,...
“The fall of Communism was at the same time when the rave scene exploded and came to Eastern Europe, in this wave of freedom, and colors, and very loud electric music,” Popakul explains. “Everything was very fresh, and nobody knew what it was yet; everything was much more Diy culture, based on a human network, than the scene is now, which is much more commercialized.”
Nominated for the Annie Award for Best Animated Short Subject, Acid Rain follows Young, a woman who connects with an unstable weirdo named Skinny, after running away from her depressing hometown. Joining Skinny in his van as he goes about criminal business proceedings, Young embarks on a trippy journey with no destination, experiencing the world through a trippy,...
- 12/30/2019
- by Matt Grobar
- Deadline Film + TV
Tomek Popakul's film has won both the Grand Prix and the Audience Award, while the Croatian project The Family Portrait has emerged victorious in AnimatekaPRO Pitch. The 16th International Animated Film Festival Animateka in Ljubljana, which took place from 2-8 December, has wrapped with Polish filmmaker Tomek Popakul's festival hit Acid Rain winning both the €1,000 Grand Prix and the Audience Award, worth the same amount and provided by the Slovenian Animated Film Association. The jury consisted of Waltraud Grausgruber, director of the Vienna-based Tricky Women/Tricky Realities Festival, and filmmakers Edmunds Jansons (Latvia), Ana Nedeljković (Serbia), Jonas Odell (Sweden) and Marie Paccou (France). Each of them gave a Special Mention to a film in the competition, which consisted of short films from Central and Eastern Europe. For the full list, please scroll down. Nelly Michenaud's Almost There, made at the UK's National Film and Television School, won the Young Talent.
A record 92 animated short films have qualified for the 92nd Academy Awards, a list that will be winnowed to 10 contenders when shortlist is announced Dec. 16. Alongside entries such as Sony’s “Hair Love” and Magic Light Pictures’ “Zog,” challengers include lauded films from animators such as Tomek Popakul’s “Acid Rain,” Siqi Song’s “Sister” and Theodore Ushev’s “The Physics of Sorrow.” Ranging from studio darlings to festival gems, the diversity of projects in the category makes for a somewhat unpredictable race, yet each year a handful of shorts float to the top, generating awards season buzz.
1. Curse of the Monkeybird (Warner Bros.)
Director: Pete Browngardt
Producers: Pete Browngardt, Sam Register
The slapstick “Indiana Jones”-inspired 2D short features classic Looney Tunes characters searching for a cursed treasure inside a jungle temple. “It was a dream come true to be able to write and direct a Porky Pig and Daffy Duck cartoon from scratch,...
1. Curse of the Monkeybird (Warner Bros.)
Director: Pete Browngardt
Producers: Pete Browngardt, Sam Register
The slapstick “Indiana Jones”-inspired 2D short features classic Looney Tunes characters searching for a cursed treasure inside a jungle temple. “It was a dream come true to be able to write and direct a Porky Pig and Daffy Duck cartoon from scratch,...
- 12/4/2019
- by Jennifer Wolfe
- Variety Film + TV
All of the winning titles at the Romanian festival's 14th edition hail from Europe. The Animest International Animation Film Festival (4-13 October), the most popular festival organised in Romania's capital, Bucharest, has announced the winning titles of its 14th edition. Twenty-five-year-old Latvian director Gints Zilbalodis' Away (Latvia) won the Best Feature Award. The jury – consisting of Jürgen Hagler, the director of Austrian festival Ars Electronica, French director Sarah Van Den Boom and Estonian director Kaspar Jancis – favoured Away for its “balance between aesthetics and story”. Animest has been an Oscar-qualifying festival since 2017, which means that the winner of the Short Film competition is automatically considered for an Oscar nomination in the Best Animated Short Film category. This year, the winner was Tomek Popakul's Acid Rain (Poland). The jury, consisting of Canadian artist Robert Valley, French producer Richard Van Den Boom and Danish animator Sara Koppel, justified their...
- 10/14/2019
- Cineuropa - The Best of European Cinema
Bolstered by their country’s recently introduced 30% cash rebate and critical acclaim for animated features “Loving Vincent” and “Another Day of Life,” Polish animators have high hopes for their growing industry as they arrive at the Annecy Intl. Animation Film Festival this week.
With more than 30 animation studios active across the country, and a number of those developing feature-length films and TV series for the international market, Poland’s profile is rising. Seven Polish projects are competing in Annecy this week, in the short, graduation and commissioned films competitions.
Polish producers have good reason to be bullish thanks to increased support from the government, which earlier this year introduced a 30% cash rebate for feature films, TV series, documentaries, and animation projects. The rebate is funded for 2019 to the tune of $55 million, with 10% of that amount dedicated exclusively to animation.
The incentive scheme has already sparked interest from foreign producers, says Robert Jaszczurowski,...
With more than 30 animation studios active across the country, and a number of those developing feature-length films and TV series for the international market, Poland’s profile is rising. Seven Polish projects are competing in Annecy this week, in the short, graduation and commissioned films competitions.
Polish producers have good reason to be bullish thanks to increased support from the government, which earlier this year introduced a 30% cash rebate for feature films, TV series, documentaries, and animation projects. The rebate is funded for 2019 to the tune of $55 million, with 10% of that amount dedicated exclusively to animation.
The incentive scheme has already sparked interest from foreign producers, says Robert Jaszczurowski,...
- 6/12/2019
- by Christopher Vourlias
- Variety Film + TV
Vimeo has announced its 2018 nominees for the Best of the Year Staff Picks Awards. Vimeo has recognized the best Staff Picks of the year by calling out the winners on its blog since 2016, but the company is elevating its end-of-the-year celebration this year by revealing nominations and bringing in a distinguished jury for each category to decide the winner. Each award recipient will receive a cash prize and a physical trophy, in addition to the Best of the Year badge, and the winning films will be screened at Nitehawk Cinema in Williamsburg, Brooklyn on January 17th.
There are three jurors for each Staff Pick category, including the 2017 winners for each respective category. Categories include: Best of Action Sports, Best of Animation, Best of Comedy, Best of Documentary, Best of Drama, Best of Eye Candy and Best of Travel. Jury members include Alan Cumming, Roger Ross Williams, Reinaldo Green, and Sarah Schneider,...
There are three jurors for each Staff Pick category, including the 2017 winners for each respective category. Categories include: Best of Action Sports, Best of Animation, Best of Comedy, Best of Documentary, Best of Drama, Best of Eye Candy and Best of Travel. Jury members include Alan Cumming, Roger Ross Williams, Reinaldo Green, and Sarah Schneider,...
- 1/7/2019
- by Zack Sharf
- Indiewire
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