The Official Short Film Section presents 18 works, 12 of which are competing for this edition’s awards

 Oscar-nominee The Letter Room is among the productions participating in this edition

 Calmin Borel, member of the Clermont-Ferrand International Short Film Festival’s committee, film critic Javier Acevedo and film curator Oana Ghera will judge this edition’s short films

Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, Wednesday 31 March 2021. The 20th Las Palmas de Gran Canaria International Film Festival’s Official Section will premiere in Spain 12 in-competition short films and will show, too, 6 other out-of-competition short films from 2020’s selection. Among these works, 14 will be available both on streaming and on the screens of Cinesa El Muelle.

Programmer José Cabrera, who is in charge of the Festival’s short-film selection, explains in the catalogue the complex situation endured when selecting the titles. He talks about last year’s challenging distribution of a format that managed to survive thanks to the majority of the festivals’ online streaming, which, despite granting its survival, has taken it away from movie theaters.

This singular distribution, along with multiple film events and shootings’ cancellations, have been some of the obstacles the programmer has faced when trying to build a project that has nonetheless surpassed all expectations, thus getting, as Cabrera points out, “a varied showcase where the creative process of brilliant works has prevailed”. Likewise, the text states that, even though these are works with no apparent common ground, because of their diverse genres, nationalities or filmmakers, they all happen to “combine form and substance”.

Thus, the edition recovers some titles of enormous value recognized with several awards in prestigious festivals and which would have been part of the 2020 Official Section, as well as other works newly added that get the audience closer to the current short film panorama.

The selection includes Elvira Lind’s 2021 Oscar-nominee The Letter Room, as well as works by Mariana Galvão, the duo Bárbara Wagner and Walter de Burca, Dorian Jespers, Gabrielle Stemmer and the trios Guy Maddin, Galen Johnson, Evan Johnson and Robin Klengel, Leonhard Müllner, Michael Stumpf, among others.

Short Film Jury

The jury granting this edition’s awards is made up of French Calmin Borel, who was president of Clermont-Ferrand University’s Film Society and is now the coordinator of “The Lab”, a Clermont-Ferrand International Short Film Festival’s competitive section; film critic Javier Acevedo, who specializes in the study of new formats and audiovisual developments on the Internet; and Romanian film curator Oana Ghera, who is the artistic director of the Bucharest International Experimental Film Festival and was, until three years ago, a co-programmer of the NexT International Film Festival. The selection of films they will have to judge is the following:

Bella (Thelyia Petraki, Greece, 2020, 24 min.)
Blue Affair (Kosuke Okahara, Japan, 2020, 13 min.)
Catavento (João Rosas, Portugal, 2020, 40 min.). BAFICI’s Best Short Film Award.
Entre tú y Milagros (Mariana Saffon, Colombia, 2020, 20 min.)
Grigio. Terra Bruciata / Burnt. Land of Fire (Ben Donateo, Italy, 2020, 14 min.)
Hide (Daniel Gray, Canada, Hungary, France, 2020, 11 min.) BAFICI’s Special Mention.
Lemongrass Girl (Pom Bunsermvicha, Thailand, 2021, 17 min.)
Motorcyclist’s Happiness Won’t Fit Into His Suit (Gabriel Herrera, Mexico, 2021, 10 min.)
My Own Landscapes (Antoine Chapon, France, 2020, 18 min.)
Palma (Alexe Poukine, France, 2020, 39 min.) INTERNATIONAL PREMIERE after winning several awards at Clermont-Ferrand
Tan perdida como convencida (Mariana Sanguinetti, Argentina, 2020, 10 min.)
The Letter Room (Elvira Lind, USA, 2020, 30 min.)

Out-of-competition short films:
Clean With Me (After Dark) (Gabrielle Stemmer, France, 2020, 21 min.)
How to Disappear (Robin Klengel, Leonhard Müllner, Michael Stumpf, Austria, 2020, 21 min.)

Ruby (Mariana Gaivão, Portugal, 2019, 25 min.)
Stump the Guesser (Guy Maddin, Galen Johnson, Evan Johnson, Canada, 2020, 19 min.)
Sun Dog (Dorian Jespers, Belgium, 2020, 20 min.)
Swinguerra (Barbara Wagner, Walter de Burca, Brazil, 2019, 23 min.)