It was the 56th of Sweden’s Short Film Festival (Sveriges Kortfilmsfestival), organised by The Film and Video Federation (Sveriges Film och Videoförbund) the 22-23 of March in Bio Rio, Stockholm. 148 films entered (27 films shown, plus the Minute Films), and beside diplomas, silver and bronze medals two films were awarded the gold medals in the two main classes.
Individual Class winner and gold medalist was “Naomi and the Heartbreakers” (“Naomi och hjärtekrossarna”; dir Jonathan Persson, prod J Persson and Luca Bogo), a charming young adult superhero film about blue-haired (sic!) Naomi, played by Linda Molin, who is dumped by her boyfriend. Instead of getting crushed, she seeks revenge. She adopts a mask, martial arts (eventually also a sidekick, Joel) and roams the street to take revenge upon other heartbreakers. You won’t get the entire plot here, but it’s full of humour, twists and human emotion. Very entertaining, indeed.
Official trailer here
Filmschool Class gold “The Kiss” (“Kyssen”, dir Filip Geldon, prod: Jakub Michalski, Tomas Hagström) medalist was actually Polish – with Polish dialogue – but allowed to enter this Swedish competition due to one of the producers being Swedish. A story about two girls finding love after a disco evening in Warsaw. (Not sf or fantasy.)
The “individual class” is the former “amateur class” and usually considered the main class, since The Film and Video Federation in practice and heart is an amateur film society. The “filmschool class” is for people attending different film schools. Beside this we had the Swedish Cup in “Minute Films”, a cathegory of films exactly 60 seconds, actually invented in Sweden. Winner was “Next Slussen”, a flick about strange messages in the Stockholm Metro.
Well above 100 people attended the cinema, among them Yours Truly for whom this was the 25th Sweden’s Short Film Festival.
Amateur filming has a long history in Sweden. Ingmar Bergman would have been proud. Actually he even once paid a visit to this festival…*
*) I was there then.
