Interviews & Reviews

A way for Tomás is a drama short film.  

It deals with the story of Tomás who, desperate, knocks insistently on the door of a lonely house. Nobody opens it. When he leaves the place, he sees some bushes moving and goes into a wooded path. Along the way, from his memories, he faces several episodes of fear in his life until he reaches the exit of the path, which takes him back to the door of the house. Tomás enters and talks with a woman (who represents death), at which point he decides to face his fears. 

So we have experience of the past and presence of the mai character. 

This short film has the value of working mainly on atmosphere rather than on the plot. The two directors of this movie menage to build a strong metaphorical atmosphere. 

This mood of the film is excellently conveyed above all by the performances of the actors, all well chosen and directed, and a very refined cinematography that strongly tells the inner state of mind of the main characters. The predominant colors are dark blu, gray and green. The movements of the camera are very fluid and close to the actors to create a  very suggestive and emotional impressionistic look. 

Dialogues are rich and every word is chosen with attention. Sound design is dark and helps to create a strong sense of suspence in the search of the main character between past and present. The rhythm of the editing follows the wave of this research. So a very good work for the two directors Andrés Ricaurte  and Martín Agudelo Ramírez.

Andrés Ricaurte was born on June 8, 1977 in Medellín, Colombia. His childhood is lived between his hometown and Bello, a city a few kilometers away. Since he was a child he was concerned about the events and characters that inhabited the streets and decided to walk through them and live it without prejudices. At the age of 33 and after dealing with hundreds of stories of understanding and living with Death as an elusive friend during such a rush, he decides to return to home and study to be someone in life. 

He studied Film and Television Production at a state university and began a career to capture on paper what he had experienced and get on images what he had learned, from the hand of great people who love that beautiful art called Cinema, just like him; which is nothing more than the possibility of narrating life. 

As a director, writer and director, he recorded his first short film in 2012 and then he dedicated himself to writing while working on various film productions in different departments. In 2018 he resumed the intention of directing and began to incorporate cinematographic narratives and aesthetics into music video clips, an industry in high demand in the city and also two short films, one on the way to festivals and the other in the post-production process. 

In the course of this year, he is writing and developing his debut with a long-term story and in pre-production of a feature film that will be recorded in early 2021.

Martín Agudelo Ramírez  is a lawyer from the Universidad Autónoma Latinoamericana, with a Bachelor of Philosophy and Theologian from the Universidad 

Pontificia Bolivariana, PhD in Philosophy from the Universidad Pontificia Bolivariana and PhD from the University of Salamanca - Spain.

Writer of two books: "The problem of the foundation of Human rights" and "Power: Its foundation and its limits from Human rights".

Screenwriter and Director of three short films: "Triptych of a lost lady - 2017", "A guardian before the mirror - 2018" and "A Way for Tomás - 2019".

A way for Tomás was finalist in September’s Florence Film Awards Monthly competition 2020. Congratulation to all cast and crew! 

Hitimahana  is a drama short film. 

It’s the story of a young woman who embraces life to the fullest with the man she loves and her friends by her side. But an event turned her life upside down.

This is the first time as a director of Florence Gomez, a very powerful first time. 

The main characters Juliette Coudant and Cédric Hammar are really well chose and perfectly directed. Their acting is really intense and authentic. 

The locations chosen where to shot this film are signifiant and very strong as the main characters are. 

In Hitimahana the cinematography is elegant and very clever. The movements of the camera, which is never still and very near to the actors, give a very strong impressionistic look to this work and help to convey each inner emotions of the characters. 

Furthermore, the director’s choice to reveal only at the end with the opening of a frame the real condition of the character in the present is very intelligent. This choice,  supported also by an important sound design is very effective in maintaining a strong sense of waiting for the audience throughout the short film. 

In the end an excellent first time as a director for Florence Gomez.

After writing children's books, Florence Gomez decided to start directing, writing and producing films and documentaries.

Passionate about the 7th art, she chooses to live her dream by directing her first short film, Hitimahana. This film tells the story of a young woman who sees her life turned upside down and who makes the decision to live her life to the fullest surrounded by the man she loves and her group of friends.

This simple story invites the viewer to question his vision on what surrounds him and his perception of what he thinks he sees. Indeed, the way the scenes are filmed leads to a personal interpretation of the story at the end of the film. Through this short film, natural settings far removed from the clichés of Tahiti and the importance of Polynesian culture are discussed in the background.

Florence is currently working on the production of a 52 min documentary film about Oceania and the writing of a 90 min feature film.

Hitimahana is in consideration for December Florence Film Awards Monthly competition 2020. 

Good luck to all cast and crew! 

MARIA THE KOREAN BRIDE: GHOST WEDDING is a very intense and deep creation’s Documentary.

This huge job deals with the theme of “ghost marriages”.

Ghost marriages are an ancient—and now outlawed—tradition in mainland China. Nevertheless, it persists and is still practiced in various communities in Asia. Maria the Korean Bride, the voice of an unmarried Asian-American woman, challenges this tradition by participating in this ritual and questions how the societal pressure on women to marry continues even after death.

Dating back to the Han Dynasty, ghost marriages were only for the wealthy to participate. For some, this ritual was arranged during their lifetime, predestined to marry after death. For others, living family members would organize a ghost marriage for their loved ones to prevent the deceased from experiencing loneliness during the Afterlife.

MARIA THA KOREAN BRIDE: GHOST WEDDING it’s a very urgent and necessary documentary about a very unknown issue and it’s has the value to be really very well done and to be very suggestive. 

In this documentary we have a very clever contamination between fiction and documentary. 

It’s supported by a very strong editing which is very pressing and involving in the rhythm while respecting the atmosphere of the lands the director explores.

The voice and the presence of the director Maria Yoon guide us in the research about the origins, the sense and the tradition of this ritual, never judging what she finds but simply showing us it, and this is a great value for this kind fo documentary film. 

The cinematography is refined and evocative like the documentary is, even  the soft postproduction is consistent with this choice. 

The sound design is truly essential and elegant, softly underling the sense of  ancient rituals and traditions we are watching.

While the production is not a high-budget, the documentary  MARIA THA KOREAN BRIDE: GHOST WEDDING doesn’t suffer for this condition and we cannot deduce it. 

So a great job for the director Maria Yoom.

Maria Yoon is a Korean-American film producer, director, and performance artist. As the self-proclaimed voice of unmarried Asian-American women, her previous feature-length documentary, entitled Maria the Korean Bride (2013) explored the meaning of marriage in America, spontaneously coordinating weddings in all fifty states. For her sequel, Maria the Korean Bride: Ghost Wedding (2020), she investigates the possibility of marriage after death. Her work often challenges the expectations and interrogates the traditions of first and second-generation Americans with the aim of empowerment and hope for a better cultural understanding.

MARIA THA KOREAN BRIDE: GHOST WEDDING is in selection the 2020 Monthly Florence Film Awards competition in November. 

Good luck to all cast and crew! 

 DON’T FORGET THEM is a very honest and intense documentary.  

It deals with the story of a doctor, a volunteer, traveling to the refugee camps near Duhok, Kurdistan in order to help with the medical need there.

You suddenly can feel involved in the lives of the refuges because of the point of view of the main “character” who is an insider in this community, a doctor taking care of them. So you have the direct experience of this person and his narrative voice let us to live inside this camps of refugees. 

The fact that doctor is directly involved in this story let the audience feel strongly the truth of the cruelties related to the Fighting in Northern Syria, in a very authentic way. 

There are also several interviews to other volunteers working on that camps, most of them took part of “Love for the least” a MOVEMENT of missionary work. Through their words you can discover the consequences of the fighting in Northern Syria on these refugees: the condition of their lives in the camps in which also the rain can be a big problem, the danger for their life and all the health’s problems, the condition of the children who have the “memory of the war”, “a memory is not easy to live with". Everything is very different from how you can imagine and stronger than anything you can watch in TV news.

One of the person in the documentary says: “ We need to show the people what we have here, what we are doing here, but we still need human resources.” 

In this sentence there is maybe the sense of this film. 

Volunteers work to give an hope to children and people in this camps through education and forms of job to do. 

“We cannot change the past, but we can create a better future”, this is the aim. 

And the final football match between children let us hope this aim can be real. 

Even if the budget of this independent film is not high, the cinematography is always refined and elegant and never suffer this condition. 

The rhythm of the editing of the documentary is intense and involving all during the film. 

The point of view of the director on this refugees is really honest and very empathic and you feel the strong necessity to watch more and more films on that issue. 

DON’T FORGET THEM is directed by Kamaran Karym who is a freelance director, editor and camera operator with KamFilming Production Company. He is based in the UK and has worked in the filmmaking industry for more than 10 years.

About this very strong film he says:  “I really enjoyed working on this project and I hope it helps to make the world more aware of the refugees suffering in the camps in Kurdistan.”

And the Producer Kim Polo adds: “This is my first full length documentary. The Middle East news has always fascinated me, ever since I was a Peace Corps Volunteer in Jordan from 1999-2001. I have followed along as the Syrian War escalated, ISIS formed and invaded, and in 2014 when the Yazidi Genocide took place in Sinjar. Recently, I became especially moved by the stories unfolding from the refugees living in camps in Kurdistan. I couldn’t help myself, but want to make a documentary about it. I wanted to tell the world what was happening there, inform them of the problems, possible solutions, and raise awareness for those struggling from war. I didn’t want to just read about it anymore, I wanted to actively try and help. I hope you are inspired by the film and it helps to explain the humanitarian crisis continuing even today in Kurdistan and worldwide.”

We can confirm they really reached this aim. Thank you for this important documentary. 

 DON’T FORGET THEM won Best Original Score and Honorable Mention Feature Documentary for the May Monthly Competition on the Florence Film Awards.

Pensioners Chips Episode 5 US Presidential Campaign is a very funny animated short film. 

We can pleasantly watch at the lives of Willy and Jimmy, old 1995s microprocessors, retired for 20 years, grow old slowly. So Willy and Jimmy are two personalized microprocessors. In a Park, sitting on a bench, they are in a conversation, like every afternoon. They meet quite regularly and their meetings are never very quiet. Since 20 years now they meet every day and discuss everything which is discussable with their own sense of humor. Whether it will be things out of a normal life or political circumstances in Europe - which easily could stay for all the world. 

We can also add about this project that originated Willy and Jimmy are side characters out of a real big project from the CGI Magic Movie Corporation named "The Fabulous Three". This is about adventures in the internet and should be made for the big screen.

The director is able to create in only four minutes and fifty-two seconds a very clever, ironic and colorful comedy about the election of the American President. After only few minutes of this little short film you completely forget that Willy and Jimmy are two microprocessors in stead of real persons and you feel like to be sit on a bench playing chess with them. 

Dialogues are really well written and the rhythm of the scene and the editing are very intense so that you continue keep a strong attention from the beginning to the end of this funny and involving short film. 

Moreover the technique of 3D animation is perfectly used in this Job. Even if the budget of this project not very high, the result is really refined. Before voting for a new President you should always watch back to this precious short animated film! 

Pensioners Chips Episode 5 US Presidential Campaign is written, directed and produced by Joachim Weber. 

Joachim Weber is Founder and CEO of CGI Magic Movie Corporation USA, and he is a German script writer, director and producer.

Pensioners Chips Episode 5 US Presidential Campaign won the honorable Mention for  Animated Film in May Monthly competition of the Florence Film Awards. 

Congratulations to all cast and crew! 

THE EVE, is an award winning horror short film. 

In this precious short movie we can see the story of Simon who is an eight-year-old boy. This boy seems to have everything from life. He’s a handsome child, he’s rich yet unhappy. He senses that there’s something wrong with his life and this leads him to wander off thanks to his fervid imagination. His greatest wish is to leave the materialistic world behind since he isn’t fond of it. That’s why the only present he wants for Christmas is for Santa Claus to take him away to live in his fairyland toy factory. At the same time, a secret that his family has been keeping for a long time suddenly comes to the surface and it is feared that the worst might happen soon. The expectation for the stroke of midnight on the night before Christmas is transformed into reality for everyone on the eve of something truly different. Something terrible that might happen.

THE EVE is really well supported in the storytelling by a colorful and refined cinematography by Giulio Pietromarchi. Furthermore, every choice of the camera movement contributes to the intensity of the experience. An other very strong aspect is the precise and “terrifying” sound design by Niccolò Palomba and Donatella Ruggiero.

Even the acting of the main characters is always elegant and believable, all actors are well directed and chosen. The rhythm of the editing helps to build the sense of anxiety throughout the short film and within this precious short movie you can find also some parts of great Animation that introduce you to the nightmares of the child. The Special Effects are also really organic and well integrated.

We can really say that this horror short movie shows us all the talent of this very good director at his first time as a director.

Luca Machnich, the director, is a grandnephew of Anton Machnich, one of the movie pioneers in Italy, who opened the first movie theaters in Italy, in Romania and in Ireland (the latter in partnership with the famous writer James Joyce) in the early 19th century. He studied film direction at the Los Angeles Film School after working as a production assistant in several screen and TV movies (also with Ettore Scola). He authored "Spaghetti Nightmares", one of the best books on Italian fantasy and thriller movies which was published in Italy (M&P edizioni) and in the United States (Fantasma books). The extended Italian version was very much appreciated by the fans of the genre and the film critics. 

About this short film he said: 

“THE EVE is a story that echoes the style of the great American thriller writer Robert Bloch (whose novel "Psycho" was filmed by Hitchcock) in its macabre irony, of Dino Buzzati, the most important Italian fantasy writer in its longing for the transcendent and the desperate waiting for an opportunity of redemption from a tragic life, and of the great American fantasy fiction writer Henry James in its interior monologues and in the psychological narration of the leading characters. Instead, it distances itself from a certain Italian film genre that was exploited until the end of the 19th century and whose formulas now appear repetitive. 

The film gives the opportunity to explore in an international film language the purity and fantasy of a child's world violated by the cynicism of the world of adults, and to narrate it through the dilated times of dream and imagination in the setting of a Christmas that has nothing joyful and mystical and where the waiting for another future, symbolized by the bell tower, is the leading character of the story.”

THE EVE won a Honorable Mention VFX and Best Production Design at the Florence Film Awards Monthly Competition. 

Congratulations to all cast and crew!

THE TREASURE in a very very delicate and refined short film about the relationship between grandparents and grandchildren.

It deals with the story of Mariù who is five years old and she only has a cup of colors and two parents in trouble. One day, an old red Cinquecento car stops in her garden under her apricot tree in blossom, and there, like a magician, appears her grandaddy Natale. He came to take her away to grannies home. There, the little girl realizes that her life is changing but, thanks to two eccentric grandparents and a little bit of faith, she can still be a child.

Even if this short film is the first time as a Director for Nicol Zacco, we cannot infer about that and we can appreciate the choices of direction from the beginning to the end. Actors are really well chosen, in particular we can quote the talent of Giusi Merli in the role of the grandmother and Mario Faticoni in the role of the grandfather. Also Elena Addis is a very talented girl. 

The cinematography of Benjamin Sidney is colorful and refined to underline the mood of the characters, the sound design and the score are both very smooth and bright as the story is. Also the rhythm of the editing helps to be involved in the flow of the events. 

So a very good test of cinema for this director at her first work. 

About Nicol Zacco we can add that she was born in Sicily in 1989 but she moved to Florence when she was a child. There she has grown up and she got in touch with several artistic circles and she started to write and to love literature, cinema, theatre and music. She is Phd in Languages and Phd in Communication studies. 

Now She is majoring in cinema studies at the Cagliari university. In 2013 she moved to Cagliari where she have started to study cinema and to collaborate with directors and local productions. She directed several commercials. She have worked for 4 years for the New York Film Academy and for the Mostra Internazionale del Cinema di Venezia.

About the short film THE TREASURE she said: “I wrote this short film in 2018, after my grandfather died. I was upset for the loss and for the impossibility of communicating with him anymore. I tried to wrote our story, our relationship, but I couldn’t find in me any relief: it was like writing couldn’t express the deep of our connection: it was not possibile to explain. I realized that I only had to show it. So I wrote the screenplay of a trick he played on me with a dime when I was a young girl, and that I found out it was a joke only at his funeral. I wanted this movie to be a little piece of a fairy tale, not told, just watched by a viewer who “spies” secretly from a window watching all the story. We have worked a lot on the locations, costumes, on the colors. I also managed to obtain a natural relationship between the actors. During the first shooting day the little girl started from the very first time to call them “grandma” and “grandpa” also when we were not shooting. They stayed together all the time like a real family. This make me very happy. After this experience I realized that I have obtained the mood I was looking for to remember my grandfather like I wanted. For the soundtrack I have worked with a compositor (Anthony Sidney) who watched over and over again the ended scene to find the “Mariù’s theme” and to make it the leading theme and original mood of the movie. We have done all the job without a production, it is a complete independent movie and we have raised the budget only presenting it on a crowdfunding site and spreading the story.”

Even if is a low budget short film, it doesn’t suffer about this condition and we cannot infer that. THE TREASURE won a Honorable Mention First Time Director in the monthly Florence Film Awards competition. Congratulations to all cast and crew!

GORGER, written by Paul G. Andrews, is about the friendship and the  struggle of a group of men struggling with the attempt to emerge from a  muddy social reality. After a robbery ended badly, the group of  accomplices, former boxers, completely falls apart. Those who were once  considered best friends turn into enemies, ready to do anything to take  revenge and ease their pain.

The script opens with a first act  that looks like a book. The actions are described in detail to make the  scene easily visible without being boring or superfluous. And in fact,  the mind immediately goes to the English suburbs made of fog and brick  buildings. The characters are so well defined that reading their  introduction seems to see them already and each has its own well-defined  personality that never betrays itself until the last word of the  script.

Boxing is one of the topics that are covered. As very  often happens in the suburbs left to themselves, this sport will be  transformed into a defense weapon to avoid the personal collapse of all  the characters and translates into a metaphor in which attack and  defense get mixed, confused, canceled.

The dialogues are very dry  yet honest and consistent with a reality that leaves little room for  conversations or psychological confrontation and which is mainly based  on bodily, instinctive, and primal social exchanges.

Fordham, a  policeman and former friend of the antagonist Jimmy the fix, in one of  his lines says: "Is that a threat?". Jimmy the fix replies: "I'm trying  to protect you". And Fordham says, "It's the same thing."

This is  the key line of the whole film. Because this is what all the  protagonists do. Pursuing personal and family protection but slipping  during the process with the consequence of transforming everything into a  social threat where right and wrong get mixed until they conceptually  disappear.

The pace of the script is tight, twists are not  lacking, and hold the reader's mind on the words for the whole duration  of the reading.

A so well written script that deserves to become a  film, as it happened with the beautiful  Snatch by Guy Ritchie, that  reminds of it for some aspects. 

Mathilda is a very elegant and auteur cinema’s short film.

It deals with the story of Mathilda who is a young girl who lives happily with her 53-year-old caretaker Ethan in an isolated town. On her birthday of 15, she gets the same tattoo as Ethan's. Before showing him the new tattoo, she sees an unexpected birthday gift.

The most particular and best aspect of this short film is the atmosphere the director is able to create. 

It’s very clever the choice to start always from the details of a scenes to reveal after the all contest and contributes to built a strong sense of waiting in the audience.  Ai Chung’s cinematography is consistent with this choice, adding to the borderline contest of the story a strong feeling of realism using totally natural lights.  

The actors Laurel Badenell and W. Scott Norton are perfectly chosen and directed. Especially the girl is revealing a very strong talent and attitude to the acting. The dialogues are minimal and very well written to add sense only when images and actions of the actors cannot add anything else. 

Costumes are very light in the tone and convey the sense of everyday life of the film. The sound design and the set design are very essential and underline the tone of the film. The rhythm of the editing help us to stay in a sense of suspense and surprise all during the film. 

All the aspects we quoted let us to appreciate the strong identity as a filmmaker of Stephy Tao at her first time as a director, and we really hope to see her first feature film as director as soon as it is possible. 

About Stephy Tao we know that she is drawn to themes of human relationships, romance, death, loss, and longing. She tells stories from a female perspective in a unique way, and believes that as a mass medium, film is ideal for raising awareness about social issues. They have the power to awaken and heal people. They don’t need to provide solutions. Often it is enough just to ask a question.

The short film Mathilda won the April Monthly Competition of the Florence Film Awards as Best Short Film, Best Cinematography, Best Production Design and Best Sound Design. 

Congratulations to all cast and crew who supported Stephy Tao in this short film! 

Alaska Long Hunters is a traditional, well done documentary. 

The documentary is built by a lot of interviews to people who know this land very well: the animals that inhabit it, the danger of nature and the changes of the seasons. 

This award winning story follows the life of a young pilot who flew in Alaska’s frontier arctic. Experience the front-seat thrills of bush planes and helicopters operating in the most dangerous conditions on earth, airborne among the magnificent mountains, glaciers and rivers that only Alaska has to offer. Includes true-life experiences of accidents, comradeship, humor and heartbreak of life in early Alaska, gone forever when dismantled into parks in the 1980’s. Based on the book Last of the Long Hunters by Mark Rose, the scene opens with an early history of the Great Land and those that lived in it through interviews with several life-long Alaskans, including Hilda Lidner, Ray Atkins and Gale Ranny to name a few. Leading up to the introduction of the authors use of a new tool of transport – the single engine airplane, but not without extracting a terrible price. Experience what it was like to growing up among the dangerous game, hunting the massive caribou herds and absorbing the greatness of the county. Pilots will gain from the flying experiences related, and every boy, man and aviator will be compelled to grapple with its final truth, concluding with a crisis encounter that forever changed the pilot's life forever. Filmed on Location in Alaska.

It’s very strong for the audience to watch and be in touch in this documentary with this land at the end of civilization, in contact with the sense of life and death through the nature and seems the “main characters” in this film are searching for meaning throughout this trip that would be useful and meaningful for each of us. 

To tell about this limitless nature, the director uses a very refined cinematography, by Tom Delich, and a very well chosen Original Soundtrack that emphasizes every aspect discovered in the story. 

Plus the editing is intense and engaging from the beginning to the end, and doesn’t let audience get bored anywhere. 

This good documentary is the first time as a director of Mark D. Rose, although from the result one we would think he had a long experience in Documentary for television. 

Mark D. Rose was born in Corvallis, Oregon to a logging family seasoned in the outdoors. At an early age he and his family moved to Alaska, where he was raised near Juneau. Immersing himself in that challenging environment, he early took up aviation, focusing his career in that direction for the next decades, eventually thrown into the construction of the Alaska Pipeline as a helicopter fleet manager, tasked with building out the mountain network vital to the project. Rose worked and flew in those extremes which pushed he and his colleagues to the edge on many occasions, teaching life lessons that only Alaska and the mountains can.

Mark was always fascinated with photography, attested by the photo albums he collected based on the experiences he witnessed and documented along the way. Eventually earning multiple patents in wireless, Mark moved from high-tech to writing and now to now to film. 

Alaska Long Hunters was in selection for August Monthly competition at Florence Film Awards. 

Congratulations to all cast and crew! 

The experimental film USED AND BORROWED TIME by Sophia Romma reminds of a real “experiment”. The author and director Romma took care of it like if it was a scientific experiment carried on in a laboratory, day by day, slowly, not to miss any detail, regardless of the time that it takes to pursue the goal. And as a matter of fact, it really took time, three hours and (almost) a half.

Do you feel these three hours while watching it? Not really. Romma divided the movie into a first part and a second one, but the factor that helps not to feel the length of her work is the way she switches from present to past and vice versa while telling the story of Eva Gold, a blind Jew woman that had to face racism in her past (the 60s) not only towards herself as a Jew woman but also as a lover of a young African American guy that tries to fight segregations laws.

But racist elements are still a thing in her present, as the vendors that she meets in an Alabama market testify while speaking about “Chinese products” and “Chinese danger” to the American economy.

It would be a shame to reveal what happens in this linear yet very dialogued plot but we have to mention the acting of the entire cast and the beautiful orchestra led by Queen Ilise that is used in a very experimental way. The park in which they play their music reminds of the space meant to the orchestra in theaters, therefore like if the orchestra was another part of the audience but inside the play itself.

And it’s not a typo to use the word “play” even though Romma’s work is a movie, because the elements that she chooses and her direction remind so much of a theater play.

The very modern theme of the movie makes it be really contemporary, almost as if it was the photography of these just past months lived in the United States. And in this year of American elections and especially for what happened this summer, when the entire world came together to shout out against white privilege and racism, this experiment seems to have totally succeeded.