The European Film Academy’s short film tour brings the short films selected for the European Film Awards to audiences across Europe – and beyond. The programme features a manifold panorama of contemporary filmmaking, whereas each film has been presented at a different renowned European (short) film festival with a candidacy for the European Film Awards 2020.

In 2020, the European Short Film Candidates have been selected at the following festivals:

– Ottobre 2019: International Short Film Festival of Cyprus (Cipro), Riga International Film Festival (Lettonia), Valladolid International Film Festival (Spagna), Uppsala International Short Film Festival (Svezia) – Novembre 2019: Internationale Kurzfilmtage Winterthur (Svizzera), Cork Film Festival (Irlanda), Black Nights Film Festival – PÖFF Shorts (Estonia) – Dicembre 2019: Leuven International Short Film Festival (Belgio) – Gennaio 2020: International Film Festival Rotterdam (Paesi Bassi) -Febbraio 2020: Clermont-Ferrand International Short Film Festival (Francia), Berlin International Film Festival (Germania) – Marzo 2020: Tampere Film Festival (Finlandia) – Aprile 2020: Go Short – International Short Film Festival Nijmegen (Paesi Bassi) -Maggio/Giugno 2020: Krakow Film Festival (Polonia), VIS Vienna Shorts Festival (Austria) – Giugno 2020: Kurzfilm Festival Hamburg (Germania) – Luglio 2020: Curtas Vila do Conde – International Film Festival (Portogallo), Motovun Film Festival (Croazia) – Agosto 2020: Locarno Film Festival (Svizzera), Sarajevo Film Festival (Bosnia ed Erzegovina), OFF – Odense International Film Festival (Danimarca) – Settembre 2020: Mostra del Cinema di Venezia (Italia), International Short Film Festival in Drama (Grecia), Encounters Film Festival (Regno Unito)

From the complete list of twenty-four candidates, the participating festivals nominated five films. Afterwards, the more than 3,600 EFA Members – film professionals from all over Europe – voted for the overall winner, recipient of the award EUROPEAN SHORT FILM at the European Film Awards 2020: The documentary ALL CATS ARE GREY IN THE DARK directed by Lasse Linder (Switzerland).

EFA Short Film Nominee Black Nights Film Festival – PÖFF Shorts

12 K. MARX STREET Marksis Kucha 12

8 novembre > SALA 4 ore 21

by Irine Jordania

Georgia, 2019, 15′

SYNOPSIS

The Woman pours herself a cup of coffee and sits in the same place, at the same time, every day, callingthe same number on her phone. One day, her call is unexpectedly answered.

 

EFA Short Film Nominee Sarajevo Film Festival – European Film Award WINNER

ALL CATS ARE GREY IN THE DARK Nachts Sind Alle Katzen Grau

8 novembre > SALA 4 ore 21

by Lasse Linder

Switzerland, 2019, 19’

SYNOPSIS

He calls himself “Catman”. Christian lives with his two cats Marmelade and Katjuscha. They are inseparable. As he is yearning to become a father, he decides to fertilise his beloved cat Marmelade by an exquisite tomcat from abroad. All Cats Are Grey In The Dark is a melodrama that portrays an unconventional relationship between animal and human.

 

EFA Short Film Nominee Internationale Kurzfilmtage Winterthur

COMMUNITY GARDENS Kolektyviniai Sodai

8 novembre > SALA 4 ore 21

by Vytautas Katkus

Lithuania, 2019, 15’

SYNOPSIS

It is a story about a cold relationship between a father and his son. Their bond, plagued by indifference,disintegrates completely.

 

EFA Short Film Nominee International Short Film Festival in Drama

FAVOURITES Favoriten

8 novembre > SALA 4 ore 21

by Martin Monk

Austria, Germany, 2019, 18’

SYNOPSIS

After falling out with her mother, juvenile Sofia hitchhikes southwards in search of the father she never had. When she meets grumpy engineer Michael, who reluctantly agrees to give her a lift, the two strangers develop an unlikely friendship on their shared journey through the Austrian south.

 

EFA Short Film Nominee Valladolid International Film Festival

FLESH Carne

8 novembre > SALA 4 ore 21

by Camila Kater

Spain, Brazil, 2019, 12’

SYNOPSIS

Rare, medium rare, medium, medium well and well done. Through intimate and personal stories, five women share their experiences in relation to their bodies, from childhood to old age.

 

EFA Short Film Nominee Kurzfilm Festival Hamburg

GENIUS LOCI

8 novembre > SALA 4 ore 21

by Adrien Mérigeau

France 2019, 16’

SYNOPSIS

One night, Reine, a young loner, sees within the urban chaos a mystical oneness that seems alive, likesome sort of guide.

 

EFA Short Film Nominee International Short Film Festival of Cyprus

IN BETWEEN Në Mes

11 novembre > SALA 4 ore 17

by Samir Karahoda

Kosovo, 2019, 13’

SYNOPSIS

Brothers and sons who live abroad build identical houses to express the equality and unity in family. An empathetic portrait of the families that, by economic necessity, need to live much of their lives separated and in cultures not their own.

 

EFA Short Film Nominee Clermont-Ferrand International Short Film Festival

INVISIBLE HERO Invisível Herói

10 novembre > SALA 4 ore 19

by Cristèle Alves Meira

Portugal, France 2019, 27’

SYNOPSIS

Duarte, a blind man in his 50s, starts to look for his friend Leandro, a Cape Verdean immigrant who mysteriously disappeared. Despite his disability and Lisbon’s summer heat, Duarte walks miles in his neighbourhood, but no one seems to even remember Leandro. That’s when he finds Leandro’s picture of a woman in front of a disco. Maybe she’ll be able to help him.

 

EFA Short Film Nominee Berlin International Film Festival

IT WASN’T THE RIGHT MOUNTAIN, MOHAMMAD

10 novembre > SALA 4 ore 19

by Mili Pecherer

France, 2019, 29’

SYNOPSIS

God, Abraham, Isaac, a lost shepherdess and a herd of antelopes (in the rile of the Ram) appear in this ancient tale which has been transposed to a new digital world; a world in which no one is innocent and where the things which we search for – and eventually find – are destined to be lost again.

 

EFA Short Film Nominee Leuven International Short Film Festival

LAKE OF HAPPINESS

11 novembre > SALA 4 ore 17

by Aliaksei Paluyan

Germany, Belarus, Spain, 2019, 29′

SYNOPSIS

In a small Belarusian village where time seems to stand still, Jasja, a 9-year-old girl, has to deal with her mother‘s death. Her father decides to send her to an orphanage. But one day she decides to run away, home.

 

EFA Short Film Nominee Tampere Film Festival

MEMORABLE Mémorable

8 novembre > SALA 4 ore 21

by Bruno Collet

France, 2019, 13′

SYNOPSIS

Recently, painter Louis is experiencing strange events. His world seems to be mutating. Slowly, pieces of furniture, objects, people lose their realism. They are de-structuring, sometimes disintegrating…

 

EFA Short Film Nominee Curtas Vila do Conde – International Film Festival

NHA MILA

10 novembre > SALA 4 ore 19

by Denise Fernandes

Portugal, Switzerland, 2020, 18′

SYNOPSIS

After 14 years away from her homeland, Salomé is forced to return to Cape Verde to see her dying brother. During her stopover at Lisbon airport, Águeda, a cleaning lady, recognises Salomé as “Mila”, her childhood friend. Águeda invites Salomé to leave the airport and spend the stopover at her home, with the women of her family. The neighbourhood transports her on a spiritual journey, whose destination unfurls a painful bond with her homeland.

 

EFA Short Film Nominee OFF – Odense International Film Festival

NINA HUHA

10 novembre > SALA 4 ore 19

by Hristo Simeonov

Bulgaria, 2019, 19′

SYNOPSIS

13-year-old Nina is feeling trapped in her relation with the bossy Vassil, who is preparing her to be a skilled pickpocket in Spain. There are days when she is almost ready to run away from him.

 

EFA Short Film Nominee Uppsala International Short Film Festival

PAST PERFECT

11 novembre > SALA 4 ore 17

by Jorge Jácome

Portugal, 2019, 23′

SYNOPSIS

Many cities or countries have a distinct malaise. They are places that could be Portugal, so sunk in a painful longing for the past, and where each tension of the present is only the tip of an iceberg that is explained in successive retreats that can go straight until the origin of the species, at least. This feeling, common to many latitudes, is often presented as a diagnosis, a denial of a painful present as opposed to the desire to return to a glorious past.

 

EFA Short Film Nominee Locarno Film Festival

PEOPLE ON SATURDAY Menschen Am Samstag

10 novembre > SALA 4 ore 19

by Jonas Ulrich

Switzerland, 2020, 10′

SYNOPSIS

A sunny Saturday afternoon in Zurich. In the middle of a crowded square, a businessman is lying on a bench, seemingly asleep. Someplace else, a teenager is longing for appreciation. A commuter is fighting the ticket machine. The film shows ten tableaus of everyday situations in the city. The people in it are getting confronted with small or big problems; each one of them is a Sisyphos, endlessly rolling the little stones of daily life up the mountain.

 

EFA Short Film Nominee International Film Festival Rotterdam

SUN DOG

13 novembre > SALA 4 ore 19

by Dorian Jespers

Belgium, Russia, 2020, 20′

SYNOPSIS

Fedor is a young locksmith in Murmansk, a frozen city in the obscurity of the Russian Arctic. Client after client, he roams through the alleys of concrete animated by a fantasy that isolates him from the city and its population. His dreams corrode his relation to reality and open the door to a phantasmagoric universe; a second sun is rising above the Russian Arctic.

 

EFA Short Film Nominee VIS Vienna Shorts Festival

THE BEST CITY IS NO CITY AT ALL Die Beste Stadt Ist Keine Stadt

13 novembre > SALA 4 ore 19

by Christoph Schwarz

Austria, 2019, 15′

SYNOPSIS

A young man, sitting on a rusty hangar, playing his guitar. An abandoned wooden church, no longer needed, re-locating to the outskirts of an urban expansion area for cultural interim usage. Nursery school children in a chair circle telling each other what they are NOT doing. In his essay film The Best City Is No City At All, Christoph Schwarz mixes multiple perspectives on Vienna’s largest urban expansion area. They share a sentimental criticism of growth and a romantic refusal to progress while facing imminent ecological collapse, which seems more credible to us than any happy ending.

 

EFA Short Film Nominee Go Short – International Short Film Festival Nijmegen

THE BITE A Mordida

13 novembre > SALA 4 ore 19

by Pedro Neves Marques

Portugal, Brazil, 2019, 26′

SYNOPSIS

Between a house in the Atlantic forest and a genetically-modified mosquito factory near São Paulo, a poly-amorous, non-binary relationship struggles to survive an epidemic spreading across Brazil. While in the factory millions of mosquitoes are born daily inside test tubes, the power dynamics between Helmut, Calixto, and Tao only intensify. The Bite is a film found somewhere between horror, science fiction and queer drama.

 

EFA Short Film Nominee Krakow Film Festival

THE GOLDEN BUTTONS 

11 novembre > SALA 4 ore 17

by Alex Evstigneev

Russia, 2020, 20′

SYNOPSIS

In 2016, Russian President Vladimir Putin created the national guards, whose legal task is to ensure public order, the fight against terrorism and extremism. In fact, this organisation is personally subordinate to Putin and is engaged in the suppression of those who disagree with his regime. We ended up in a closed school as photographers and tried to capture not only the faces of the guys, but also what was happening in the background. The film was created from fragments of phrases, observations and faces.

 

EFA Short Film Nominee Venice Film Festival

THE SHIFT

11 novembre > SALA 4 ore 17

by Laura Carreira

Portugal, UK, 2020, 9′

SYNOPSIS

Anna, an agency worker, takes her dog for a morning walk before doing her shopping. Searching through the discounted items, Anna wanders through the supermarket trying to find the most affordable necessities. As her groceries edge towards the checkout, her agency calls; she has lost her shift. The Shift aims to capture the vulnerable condition of a temporary worker and to reveal the immediate consequences of the dangerously short and ever-present distance separating employment and poverty, security and tumult.

 

EFA Short Film Nominee Encounters Film Festival

THE TIGER WHO CAME TO TEA Only in theatre

13 novembre > SALA 4 ore 19

by Robin Shaw

UK, 2019, 24′

SYNOPSIS

A mysterious tiger turns up unannounced and invites himself in for afternoon tea. Young Sophie and her mummy watch in fascination as the tiger proceeds to eat not only their tea, but the entire contents of the fridge and everything else in the house!

 

EFA Short Film Nominee Cork Film Festival

THINGS THAT HAPPEN IN THE BATHROOM

13 novembre > SALA 4 ore 19

by Edward Hancox

UK, USA, 2019, 13′

SYNOPSIS

In the sanctuary of the bathroom, a lonely young person yearns for love.

 

EFA Short Film Nominee Motovun Film Festival

TO THE DUSTY SEA À La Mer Poussière

11 novembre > SALA 4 ore 17

by Héloïse Ferlay

France, 2020, 12′

SYNOPSIS

Left alone in the deepest of the summer, Malo and Zoe are trying their best to catch their mother’s elusive eye.

 

EFA Short Film Nominee Riga International Film Festival

UNCLE THOMAS, ACCOUNTING FOR THE DAYS Tio Tomás, A Contabilidade Dos Dias

13 novembre > SALA 4 ore 19

by Regina Pessoa

Portugal, Canada, France, 2020, 13′

SYNOPSIS

A tribute to the director’s uncle Thomas, a humble man with a simple and anonymous life. This is her acknowledgment how one does not have to be “somebody” to become exceptional in other’s eyes.