The festival in Clermont Ferrand has enjoyed great esteem of the film community for ages. The selectors choose the best short films for the competitions, invite numerous guests and organise interesting meetings. This year’s 41st edition of the festival is held from the 31st of January to the 8th of February, 2020, and traditionally delights with its extremely rich programme.
In two competition sections, there are three Polish short film productions. In the international competition, “Ricochets” by Jakub Radej has a chance to win awards. The film is set in Poland in 1982. The two brothers – miners – represent two different attitudes towards Communist oppression. Whereas Janek chooses being actively engaged in the democratic underground movement, Tadek bets on neutrality. Their divergent attitudes lead to a conflict in which it becomes impossible to accurately balance the moral high ground.
In turn, in the competition LAB, you can find two of our animated films: “Acid Rain” by Tomek Popakul and “The Little Soul” by Barbara Rupik.
The protagonist of the film by Popakul is called Młoda. The girl runs away from home, as far away from the grey reality as possible. The initial excitement of the hitch-hiking journey subsides when she ends up on the outskirts of the city in the middle of the night. On the bridge, she notices a figure dangerously balancing on the railing. This is how she meets Chudy, a little bit unbalanced freak. Chudy lives in a recreational vehicle which he drives in order to attend to his not necessarily legal errands. Młoda decides to join Chudy. Their road together takes them to increasingly strange regions, and an unnamed bond quickly forms between them.
The plot of the animated film by Rubik starts somewhere on the banks of a river, where a dead body got stuck. Its decaying insides still envelops the soul – a miniature of the body of the deceased. The rotting organs come apart and a tiny figure forces its way through to the outside. Standing on the river bank, it says goodbye to its body and sets out on the journey to the posthumous world.
You can find more information about the festival here.