On May 30, 2022 the 19th edition of the Vienna Shorts Film Festival came to an end with prizes, flowers and champagne for the lucky winners at Stadtkino. Austrian director Mo Harawe celebrated a triumph, receiving not only the Austrian Short Film Award for his haunting film Will My Parents Come to See Me, but also qualifications for the ACADEMY AWARD®, the European Film Award and the Austrian Film Award. The top prizes in the two international competitions went to the Qatari film And Then They Burn the Sea and the Japanese animation Bird in the Peninsula. Double honored with the new Social Responsibility Award and the ORF.at Audience Award was the essay Invisible Hands by Lia Sudermann and Simon Nagy. The awards in detail:
FIDO FICTION & DOCUMENTARY
The main prize in the Fiction & Documentary International Competition went to the very personal film And Then They Burn the Sea in which Majid Al-Remaihi, according to the jury, “beautifully blends family archives with reenacted dreams”. The Jury Prize was awarded to Goodbye Jerome!, the surreal and colorful French animated film by Chloé Farr, Gabrielle Seinet and Adam Sillard which convinced the jury “with its irresistible charm”. Both films were also entered into the race for the ACADEMY AWARDS®. An Honorable Mention went to Jay Rosenblatt for his “intimately relatable record of a father–daughter relationship”, How Do You Measure A Year?.
AA ANIMATION AVANTGARDE
In the Animation Avantgarde International Competition, Bird in the Peninsula, a “meditative journey full of uncanny rituals and interrupted fantasies” by Atsushi Wada, was awarded Best Film. The Jury Prize also went to an animation, the humorous doomsday spectacle Doom Cruise by Hannah Stragholz and Simon Steinhorst. An Honorable Mention went to Impossible figures and other stories I by Marta Pajek.
ÖW AUSTRIAN COMPETITION
In the Austrian Competition, Mo Harawe's film Will My Parents Come to See Me won the Austrian Short Film Award as well as qualifications for the ACADEMY AWARD®, the European Film Award and the Austrian Film Award. Harawe returned to his native Somalia for the drama about a young man who meets a policewoman shortly before execution and, according to the jury, created “a formidable miniature about a country scarred by violence that sticks in our memory.” The Jury Prize was awarded to the touching animation In The Upper Room by Alexander Gratzer, while Hollywood by Leni Gruber and Alex Reinberg received an Honorable Mention and Breeze by Anna Lehner scored the Youth Jury Prize. The ORF.at Audience Award for films under twelve minutes went to Invisible Hands by Lia Sudermann and Simon Nagy.
MUVI AUSTRIAN MUSIC VIDEO AWARD
On Friday, Viennese director Matthew Gerges, representing the collective FLOORISLAVA, picked up the Austrian Music Video Award for the music video for Make Me Cry by On Bells. The jury appreciated the way the video with the ambiguous title softens the “boundaries between the intimate and the obscene.” Nenda Neururer aka NENDA received an Honorable Mention for her self-directed music video for Borders, in “which multiple layers of meaning converge in a homogenous style, political and urgent, unafraid to call injustice by its name.”
SPECIAL AWARDS
The Chinese first-time filmmaker Zou Jing was awarded the Elfi Dassanowsky Prize as the best female director of the festival for her drama Lili Alone. The Social Responsibility Award, newly donated by the Vienna Chamber of Labour, was given to Invisible Hands by Lia Sudermann and Simon Nagy. In their essay, the filmmakers used amateur footage from the 1960s and current off-camera commentary to highlight the lack of appreciation for care work.
