Now in its 21st edition, the REGARD Saguenay International Short Film Festival, which is held each year to the north-east of Montreal, is clearly thriving! Having achieved official recognition this year as a festival qualifying for the Oscars, this short film gathering in Quebec has also recently added the prestigious International Critics' Award to its prize list.

Around fifteen French professionals attended this year's event, including producers, directors (Franck Dion, Ladj Ly), broadcasters (France Télévisions), distributors (K-Films Amérique), as well as festival programmers (Clermont-Ferrand) and market programmers (Trouville). With 17 French productions screened this year, including seven animated films, France was certainly well-represented, with Law of Lamb by Lotfi Achour picking up the Audience Award.

A partner of the REGARD Festival since 2009, UniFrance was in attendance, and provided travel assistance for the filmmaker Momoko Seto, who presented her documentary I Don’t Want to Sleep With You I Just Want to Make You Hard and gave a "Cinema Lesson" master class.

Other master classes were also held, as well as a string of new events, including professional meetings for distributors and programmers, a pitch session, a round table discussion on the often complicated transition from short filmmaking to feature films, and a Think Tank on the subject of distribution, organized with high-profile international guests from countries including South Korea, Colombia, Italy, Ukraine, Austria, France, and the USA.

This year, VR films were included in the program for the first time thanks to a partnership with the Montreal Festival du Nouveau Cinéma, one of which was the must-see film Notes on Blindness. These presentations provided an opportunity to approach these new works from a creative angle and, echoing the efforts undertaken by UniFrance, to take their international distribution into consideration.

View the complete list of French films showcased at this event in the 2017 Festival file.

For further information, visit the festival website: www.festivalregard.com