In a football metaphor about KISFF, the Festival Hits program is the Champions League. We have prepared a star selection for the best films that took the first awards at the most honorable world festivals. Cannes, Berlin, Venice, Sundance, and prizes of a number of leading film events is another proof of the championship of the Festival Hits program.

FEST

Nikita Diakur

Germany / 2018, 4 min

Puppets on strings rave, eat and fly.

SKIN

Guy Nattiv

United States / 2018, 21 min

A small supermarket in a blue collar town, a black man smiles at a 10 year old white boy across the checkout aisle. This innocuous moment sends two gangs into a ruthless war that ends with a shocking backlash.

Bonobo

Zoel Aeschbacher

Switzerland / 2018, 18 min

When the elevator of their public housing breaks down, the fates of Felix, a disabled pensioner, Ana, a single mother struggling with her move and Seydou, a young man passionate about dance intertwine towards an explosive ending where their limits will be tested.

Weightlifter

Dmytro Sukholytkyy-Sobchuk

Ukraine / 2018, 30 min

At first sight, this is a story of a true price of a victory.

Short Matters is a project of European Film Academy, which shows a manifold panorama of the most important young contemporary European filmmaking. The initiative is organised in cooperation with a series of film festivals throughout the continent, at which the best films are selected for competition eligible for the European Film Awards. When the annual cycle is complete the members of the European Film Academy elect the overall winner.

This time the audience will have the opportunity to see three exciting, jam-packed programmes presenting contemporary problems from the most diverse parts of the world.

KAPITALISTIS

Pablo Muñoz Gomez

Belgium, France / 2017, 15 min

Santa is a capitalist. He brings toys to the rich kids and sweatshirts to the poor ones. Nikos, 5 years old.

BURKINA BRANDENBURG KOMPLEX

Ulu Braun

Germany / 2018, 19 min

A presumably African village, inhabited by Germans. The film describes a geographical construction that makes use of ‘our’ medial and collective image of Africa and puts it to the test through inaccuracies.

GRADUATION `97

Pavlo Ostrikov

Ukraine / 2017, 19 min

Roman lives a lonely life in a provincial city and works as a technician. For the first time since graduation, Liuda, his ex-classmate, comes back to town. Nobody has heard anything from her for twenty years, but Roman is set on not losing her again.

MERYEM

Reber Dosky

The Netherlands / 2017, 16 min

Filmed during the battle of Kobani, this film reveals the women at the heart of the fight against IS. With stoical perseverance and the aid of American airstrikes, these women are leading the fight for freedom.

WILDEBEEST

Nicolas Keppens, Matthias Phlips

Belgium / 2017, 20 min

Going on a safari is a dream for many. For middle-aged couple Linda and Troyer, it turns into a horribly real adventure when they get left behind in the wilderness.

Short Matters is a project of European Film Academy, which shows a manifold panorama of the most important young contemporary European filmmaking. The initiative is organised in cooperation with a series of film festivals throughout the continent, at which the best films are selected for competition eligible for the European Film Awards. When the annual cycle is complete the members of the European Film Academy elect the overall winner. This time the audience will have the opportunity to see three exciting, jam-packed programmes presenting contemporary problems from the most diverse parts of the world.

RELEASE THE DOGS

Manue Fleytoux

France, Belgium / 2017, 20 min

Anouck is a resigned girl, torn between two loves, two violences: her man, an attractive watchdog, and her little brother, a young mad pup. The night of the boy’s 18th, this delicate triangle explodes, Anouck's revolt is on its way...

THE YEARS

Sara Fgaier

Italy, France / 2018, 20 min

A woman gives voice to Annie Ernaux The Years's text, a few collected fragments on the shores of a timeless Sardinia.

SHAME

Petar Krumov

Bulgaria / 2018, 24 min

Macho is a poor boy, who skips school to work on a construction site. The only ray of light for him is his girlfriend, Donna. Yet, she is ashamed of his mother, who works as janitor in their school.

WHAT'S THE DAMAGE

Heather Phillipson

UK / 2018, 8 min

A proposition and provocation, answering back to ongoing crises under white patriarchy, relaying and augmenting feelings and gestures of chronic unease, protest and dissent.

PRISONER OF SOCIETY

Rati Tsiteladze

Georgia, Latvia / 2018, 15 min

What does it mean to be a stranger in your own home and country? An intimate journey into the world and mind of a young transgender woman, trapped between her personal desire for freedom and traditional expectations of her parents that threatens their unity.

Short Matters is a project of European Film Academy, which shows a manifold panorama of the most important young contemporary European filmmaking. The initiative is organised in cooperation with a series of film festivals throughout the continent, at which the best films are selected for competition eligible for the European Film Awards. When the annual cycle is complete the members of the European Film Academy elect the overall winner. This time the audience will have the opportunity to see three exciting, jam-packed programmes presenting contemporary problems from the most diverse parts of the world.

AQUAPARQUE

Ana Moreira

Portugal / 2018, 16 min

In an abandoned waterpark, a girl and a boy are hidden from the outside world. Between the graffited ruins of the old swimming pools and blunt slides, they find a shelter to grieve from their loss of hopes and dreams.

THOSE WHO DESIRE

Elena López Riera

Switzerland, Spain / 2018, 24 min

In the south of Spain, a race of colourfully painted pigeons, will reward not the one who flies the fastest, but the one who will have known how to seduce a female pigeon, and to fly the longest time at its sides.

KONTENER

Sebastian Lang

Germany / 2017, 30 min

'The two Poles' Maryana and Tava work together on a milk farm in Eastern Germany, but ignore each other's existence. When the farm manager goes on a business trip, Tava doesn't show up at work anymore. The next night Maryana wakes up and notices she is not alone.

I SIGNED THE PETITION

Mahdi Fleifel

UK, Germany, Switzerland / 2018, 11 min

Immediately after a Palestinian man signs an online petition, he is thrown into a panic-inducing spiral of self-doubt. Over the course of a conversation with an understanding friend, he analyses, deconstructs and interprets the meaning of his choice to publicly support the cultural boycott of Israel.

THE ESCAPE

Laëtitia Martinoni

France / 2017, 10 min

Alice sings, wears make-up and cracks herself up. She is happy. Yet she is at the hospital, just out of surgery. She is very ill and totally bald.

In a football metaphor about KISFF, the Festival Hits program is the Champions League. We have prepared a star selection for the best films that took the first awards at the most honorable world festivals. Cannes, Berlin, Venice, Sundance, and prizes of a number of leading film events is another proof of the championship of the Festival Hits program.

Fauve

Jeremy Comte

Canada / 2018, 16 min

Set in a surface mine, two boys sink into a seemingly innocent power game with Mother Nature as the sole observer...

All Inclusive

Corina Schwingruber Ilić

Switzerland / 2018, 10 min

Under the spell of mass entertainment at high sea.

SWATTED

Ismaël Joffroy Chandoutis

France / 2018, 11 min

Online players describe their struggles with "swatting", a life-threatening cyber-harassment phenomenon that looms over them whenever they play. The events take shape through youtube videos and wireframe images from a video game.

Freedom of Movement

Nina Fischer, Maroan el Sani

Germany, Italy / 2018, 30 min

Evoking the Olympic marathon from Rome 1960, in which the Ethiopian runner Abebe Bikila conquered the African continent’s first gold medal, running barefoot and becoming a sporting legend and a symbol of the Africa that was freeing itself of colonialism, Fischer & el Sani have recontextualised amidst Rome’s controversial rationalist architecture, a new race involving refugees and immigrants staking a claim to their freedom of movement.
Fischer & el Sani are examining the complexity of ideological, political and architectural implications of Bikila‘s 1960‘s Olympic gold medal run to this day.

Hector Malot: The Last Day of the Year

Jacqueline Lentzou

Greece / 2018, 23 min

New Year's eve dawns in a moon-kissed car, and Sofia has a dream that she tells no-one.