The 38th Drama Short Film Festival and the 21st International edition will run from September 14 to 19, presenting an abundance of new and promising short films from around the globe - 210 shorts in all the festival΄s programs.
This year, Drama enhances its International profile by joining forces, for the first time, with FIPRESCI (The International Federation of Film Critics), which will present its own award at the International Competition program.
2015 also marks a new collaboration between altcine and Drama Short Film Festival, with a selection of Balkan shorts that competed at all previous editions of altcineAction!, the online short film festival for Balkan filmmakers. This selection will be part of the Balkan Panorama, a new section inaugurated this year, which also includes recent Bulgarian titles by the National Academy for Theater & Film Arts ΄Kr. Sarafov’ and the Balkan Highlights of Drama program (Drama΄s most important Balkan shorts of the last years).
Apart of the International and National Competition programs, the festival offers many parallel sections: The Short Matters! 2015 special program, which will screen a selection of films from last year΄s European Film Academy Awards, the Drama΄s Student Panorama, the Pan-Hellenic Student Digital Video Contest and the Drama Pitching Lab 2015 selected projects
Two renowned Greek cinematographers are invited this year at the festival. Yorgos Arvanitis will present a masterclass on the new technologies and their application in filmmaking, while DOP and editor Nikos Kavoukidis will be honored with a mini-tribute for his 60 years long career.
Drama΄s International Competition 2015 will screen 57 films from 47 countries world-wide, including Greek Competition΄s 2013 winner Neritan Zinxhiria and his latest short, The time of a young man about to kill.
President of the International Competition Jury will be Art Historian and Senior Cultural Officer of the Ministry of Education and Culture of Cyprus (in charge of Cinema and Plastic Arts), Elena Christodoulidou, accompanied by members Laurentiu Damian (filmmaker and President of Romanian Filmmakers Union), Eric Wojcik (Clermont- Festival Film Festival director), Bojidar Manov (Film Critic and Professor at the National Academy for Theatre and Film Arts - Bulgaria) and director/producer Thodoris Papadoulakis. Grand Temoin of the jury, will be filmmaker, film critic and historian, Manuela Cernat.
Stegna, by Konstantinos Giannakopoulos
Drama΄s National Competition has programed 41 new, mostly independent Greek shorts, including 4 documentaries and 4 animations, with themes varying from unemployment to poverty, racism and the latest major European issue, migration, as some films deal with the Greek islands immigrants and refugees. Child abusing and mortality, the life of women in rural Greece, ecology and post-apocalypse stories are, among others, the subject of numerous films. Actors and actresses such as Antonis Kafetzopoulos, Lydia Fotopoulou, Yvonee Maltezou and Alexandros Logothetis are few of the names appearing.
What΄s interesting this year, is the participation of directors who have already completed a feature film, like Panayotis Fafoutis and Gregory Oiconomides, to mention a couple of them.
Bread and οlives by Alexander Jaschik & Iordanis Orfanidis, 29΄
The Jury of the 38th National Competition will be presided by writer, translator and filmmaker Achilleas Kyriakidis, with members including cinematographer Giorgos Frentzos, producer and filmmaker Nikos Sekeris, actress Marisha Triantafyllidou and film critic Yannnis Zouboulakis. Film critic Venia Vergou will be the Grand Temoin.
The pill of happiness by Cecilia Felmeri, Romania, 12΄
See here for the full line-up of the Tribute to Bulgaria: National Academy for Theater & Film Arts ΄Kr. Sarafov’ program and the Selection of Past Balkan Films of Drama Film Festival.
