Testimonials

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 Pham Thien An, He was born on November, 1989 in Viet Nam. After 4 years of undergraduate majors in Information Technology degree at Lotus University, Ho Chi Minh city, he realized his interest in cinematography and film making. He also has won some film awards in Viet Nam and especially won the 48 Hours Film Project HCM in 2014. These awards gave he a strong motivation to keep moving forward. In 2015, he moved to Houston, Texas and continued working as a freelance filmmaker since then. His latest short film, The Mute (2018), was screened as World Premiere at Palm Spring International Shortfest. 

BEST FICTION SHORT- “A story superbly acted and told, in terms of storytelling as well as the way the cinematic form used, pushed, exercised. We loved the silence and the minimalistic use of the cinema language, all there to intensify the experience. The film deals with important society issues: modernity crashes against tradition and expectations upon the individual, it reminds us that the world keeps on involving moving against all odds.” 

 BEST DOCUMENTARY SHORT “It takes a lot of courage to talk about stories that are repressed and left untold especially when they affect the whole family. It takes courage to film your own family, to strip their souls in front of the camera, and to continue filming no matter how much it hurts. Usually the closest once becomes the most distant to us and that is why this documentary is important, to remind us that we should talk to our close ones, no matter how much it hurts because it hurts more if things remain unsaid..” 

BEST ANIMATED SHORT “This was the only award that the jury unanimously awarded. You just watch the animated film and it melts your soul. A film that is important because of the way it is made, the beautiful style of animation that is a counterpoint to the difficult topic it deals with, and above all the topic that creates great sadness and in a subtle way reminds you that man is not above nature. "

 Born in rural Quebec, Alexandre Dostie is a self-taught artist with a unique background. Published poet, booze-bruised punk singer and filmmaker, his first short narrative fiction, Mutants (2016) screened in over 100 festivals and won numerous awards, including Best Canadian Short at TIFF. The film was also released as a Vimeo Staff Pick Premiere, gathering close to 700K views. I’ll End Up in Jail (2019), his latest offering, already screened at TIFF, Sundance, Clermont-Ferrand and Tampere. The film was named “Best Int. Short Film” by the Vimeo programing team on their unofficial Sundance jury awards. Alexandre is currently working on his debut feature, SHAPE. 

 Diana Galimzyanova is a filmmaker and video artist based in Moscow, Russia. Her award-winning short films were accepted to more than seventy festivals in twenty countries, and her art pieces have been a part of group exhibitions in multiple countries. Her award-winning debut feature film, the first ever female-directed Russian film noir with reverse chronology, The Lightest Darkness  is now available on VOD. She is now working on her next project, a horror-comedy Murder Girl. 

SPECIAL MENTION  “We loved the humor, the intelligence and the reflection on the current tendencies the film touches upon: the world of internet expectation, the blogger celebrity culture, the virtual world positioned against reality, the common woman and man, their needs and envies. We appreciated the freedom the director takes in mixing the genres. Is it a fiction or a documentary-that is the question: a fiction we say!!”