Short Film Competition # 8

14. Internationales Festival Zeichen der Nacht / Signes de Nuit

Sleep
Sommeil

Julien Gallée-Ferré
France
2015 / 0:16:00

Fifteen people, alone or in a couple, are filmed during their sleep. Passing from one night to the next, these active sleepers reveal a secret and unsuspected choreography, abandoning their bodies to the bizarre dance invented by their dreams.

Contra
Begona Colomar
United States
2015 / 0:20:00

"Contra" - as against - against the elements Xtian struggles with the impossible. Man versus nature. The film presents the universal question that emerges after the loss of a loved one, and its recurrent challenge. Xtian is the one left behind who must reconcile his overwhelming feelings of guilt, impotence and ire with his desire to honor his love's (Clara's) decision to take her own life. This is Xtians biggest predicament and the conflict that will bring him to face an impossible challenge at the end of the film.

Dovnqsnoan
John Manceau
Sweden
2015 / 0:03:25

Un film qui mêle la voix grave du poète suédois, Jörgen Lind, la musique hypnotique du musicien Lars falk, et de magnifiques images d’archive. Une alchimie rare qui génère une transe éphémère, puissante qui semble nous propulser au coeur même du mystère de nos origines, dans les méandres cognitives d’une mémoire ancestrale commune

Dream Reel

Sam Barnes
Australia
2015 / 0:11:15

Dream Reel is about the impassable yet ambiguous gulf between the world of dreams and the reality experienced in waking life. The short film is an insight into the conscious minds of three ordinary people and their interpretations of the unconscious realms experienced in their dreams. From recurring childhood dreams, nightmares, to dreams that are inherently absurd, Dream Reel explores how dreams can have a hermetically sealed existence of their own, while sometimes they can unearth the deepest parts of the soul.

Fratelli
Luca Sironi
Italy
2015 / 0:19:15

Armando and Emma are part of a religious group. Their task is going door to door, redeem sinners and convert faithless people. Every day the same routine. Inside the walls of their house, they live a rigorous and moderate life, no distractions are allowed. Temptations exist only to be endured. Their life always flowed this way. They know each other perfectly, and words have become useless in their relationship. An unchangeable life. The only one they know.

Betrayel
Betrayel
Susan Young
Great Britain
2015 / 0:05:40

Warning: Do Not take the stated dose. A traumatised woman trusts her psychiatrist, but becomes imprisoned in his web of psychological manipulation. A montage of medical records and pulsing pills reveal their destructive, enmeshed relationship. At its dark heart, The Betrayal is a twisted, deadly love affair.

Cetaphobia
Erin Coates
Australia
2015 / 0:12:45

A ghostly remnant from the activities of an old whaling station is awakened by a young scrimshander. Set in the coastal town of Albany, Cetaphobia is a ghost story which traces the haunting and ultimate misfortune of a married couple troubled by a whale spirit. The obscure and ambiguous spirit is an unsettling remnant of the Port City’s once viable whaling industry. Its presence is awakened after the wife, who is a scrimshander, starts inscribing on the only remaining evidence of its life: a tooth. This action unleashes a dark and cetaceous force which possesses the scrimshander and her husband and draws them back to the site of the Cheynes II, the sunken wreck of the whale chaser, where they are eventually overcome by a disconcerting and unknowable horror.