The 40th edition of the Clermont-Ferrand International Short Film Festival closed its doors on February 10. While French productions were absent from the International Competition's awards list, they picked up a host of awards in the festival's other sections and were, once again, a mainstay of the Short Film Market.
From February 5 through 9 this year, the UniFrance teams took turns to ensure a strong presence at the Clermont-Ferrand Short Film Market, meeting with international film buyers, broadcasters, and international festival programmers. In addition to the Agence du Court Métrage, ten other companies from the international sales sector were also grouped together under France's umbrella stand: Autour de Minuit, TWR, La Luna Diffusion, Manifest, Miyu Distribution, Next Film Distribution, oriGine films, Premium Films, Salaud Morisset, and Short Cuts. This significant increase in the number of participating French sales companies reflects the fragmentation of the marketplace at this time, due notably to the emergence of new digital players in the field.
While European countries remained the most strongly-represented territories this year, two geographic regions reaffirmed their presence in the market:
- Asia, which, despite the noteworthy absence of Japan, was well-represented at the film market, with the participation of China, South Korea, Hong Kong, and Taiwan
- Latin America, with the presence of stands representing Argentina, Brazil, and Chile building on the momentum generated by Colombia last year with the launch of the country's new film market at the Bogoshorts event.
For the third year running, UniFrance renewed its partnership with the Sodec, SWISS FILMS, and Wallonie-Bruxelles Images (WBI) to host two networking meetings for industry professionals. Benefiting from support from TitraFilm, these Networking Breakfasts enabled around one hundred representatives of the short films in the festival competition to meet with buyers (from Arte, Mediaset, and MovieStar, among others) and festival programmers (from events such as Venice, Toronto, and Cannes). Many award-winners from this year's festival took part in these breakfast events, including the producers Daniel Sauvage (Procirep Prize, Caïmans Productions), and Dimitri Krassoulia-Vronsky (The Amorous Indies), and the directors Florent Gouëlou (A Man My Son), Lawrence Valin (Little Jaffna), Jonathan Rochart (Junk Love), Mark Olexa (Ligne noire), Zoel Aeschbacher (Bonobo), and François Bierry (Vihta).
The awards list highlights trends that emerged at this 40th edition of the festival
First of all, we can note the triumphant return of Clément Cogitore to the short film format. Following his recent debut feature film that was acclaimed at Cannes, The Wakhan Front, the young director presented three shorts this year, The Amorous Indies and Braguino in the National Competition and The Resonant Interval in the Labo Competition, and went home with two awards and a Special Mention.
In a similar vein, we can also praise the double award win by Fresnoy for two films made with meticulous precision, Return and Dark Waves.
And finally, this year's festival was marked by a predominance of animated films: in addition to the Grand Prize awarded to Wicked Girl, You Will Be Fine by Céline Devaux and Reruns by Rosto also garnered awards.
The complete awards list can be found here.
