After last year's success, the Karlovy Vary IFF is presenting the second year of Future Frames this year, a project that presents short films from ten young and talented filmmakers. The project is organised by European Film Production, which managed to bring these young artists to the festival and introduce them to audiences at discussions, in part thanks to the support of partners Sundance Channel and Nespresso.
The first five films were presented today in the Small Hall. The Belgian film Flower of a Thousand Colours by Karen Vázquez Guadarrama, the directorial debut of Davit Pirtskhalava from Georgia, named Father, that was awarded the Golden Leopard for Best International Short Film at the 2015 Locarno International Film Festival, and Elephant Skin by Rebecca Figenschau, that won the award for best acting at the Norwegian Student Film Festival.
The central theme of the short film by Swedish filmmaker Ahmed Abdullahi is the struggle for human rights of a specific group of people – tree planters. "Sweden is known as a country with high social support, and this is one of the reasons this environment is specific, but my film isn't about Sweden – similar things happen to varying degrees everywhere in the world. If you told someone in Sweden that they were a racist, it would be as if you shot them in the heart, even though they have such thoughts," Abdullahi comments on the situation in the Scandinavian country.
Monday's Future Frames programme wrapped up with the film by Argentine Luz Olivares Capelle, who studied film direction in Buenos Aires, but also took courses with many renowned directors in Vienna. Her film Forest of Echoes is about childish imagination and death. "The idea of the film was born while filming a documentary where I was interviewing children. We talked about death, God, the Easter Bunny and in general about how my view of the world differs from theirs. Then there was a geopolitical aspect related to the fact that I'm a foreigner. I would say the movie is generally about how different our realities can be even though we all live on a single planet."
The Future Frames programme continues on Tuesday with another five premieres, starting at 3:30 pm and 6:30 pm in the Small Hall.
