Show Me Shorts Film Festival 2016 Programme announced

Show Me Shorts Film Festival 2016 Programme announced

New Zealand’s leading international short film festival, Show Me Shorts, has announced the full programme of short films in the 2016 line-up. The 11^th edition of New Zealand’s pre-eminent short film festival will showcase 47 superb short films from New Zealand and around the world, at more than 20 cinemas nationwide from 1 October.

Show Me Shorts received 1,500 submissions from more than 60 countries this year – a massive 50% increase on 2015. The final selection includes 19 New Zealand short films, 23 international short films and five local music videos.

Show Me Shorts will host ten world premieres and twenty-four New Zealand premieres during the festival.

NZ musician-turned-director Joe Lonie’s Shout at the Ground is having its world premiere in the 2016 Show Me Shorts. This raucous road-trip ‘vom-com’ follows a rock band on tour, racing to the ferry crossing, while they deconstruct a heist that robbed them of the door-take from their gig.

Award-winning animation director James Cunningham's new family-friendly film, Kitten Witch will also make its debut outing. Other New Zealand-made world premieres include: Break in the Weather, starring Aidee Walker and Peter Elliot; dramatic thriller Long Time Coming by Tom Augustine; a dramatisation of a true story, Eight Years Later, by Andrew R. Blackman; the tense, shocking Fract by Georgina Bloomfield; and Unfaithful by Lucy Timmins.

International filmmakers choosing Show Me Shorts for their world premiere include Iranian director Adnan Zandi with Butterflies; American director Tom Teller, whose ambitious sci-fi film, Icarus is set on Mars; and Fabricated - a dystopian animation set in an incredibly detailed world that took ten years in the making!

Show Me Shorts is delighted to have secured the New Zealand premiere of UK director Daniel Mulloy’s award-winning Home - a sensitive, layered and complex exploration of the breakdown and rebuilding of trust and love amid the trauma of war and migration. This role-reversing portrait of an English family heading out on what appears to be a holiday is both timely and intimate.

A German comedy is among the international films making their New Zealand debut in the 2016 Show Me Shorts. The Bathtub by Tim Ellrich dives into nostalgia and hilarity as three brothers attempt to re-create a childhood photo for their mother.

                          

Seide, directed by Elnura Osmonalivea of Kyrgyzstan, comes to NZ after screening at high profile international festivals such as Venice and Sundance. It showcases the breathtaking beauty of Kyrgyzstan’s snowy mountains, only just eclipsed by a powerful performance as a girl tries to avoid her arranged marriage.

The films and music videos have been divided into six categories, that each contain around eight short films united by a common theme. The session titles are:

●        Secrets and Lies

●        Heartstrings

●        My Generation

●        Homeland

●        He Tangata

●        Bump in the Night

The 2016 festival will not only screen in cinemas nationwide from Kaitaia to Stewart Island. For the first time, the Show Me Shorts circuit also includes Scott Base in Antarctica thanks to collaboration with Antarctica New Zealand.

 “Antarctica New Zealand is very excited to be part of the Show Me Shorts Film Festival programme in 2016,” says Jeanine Foster, General Manager Communications, Antarctica New Zealand.

“The team at Scott Base are grateful for the opportunity to be part of it all. Despite being one of the most isolated locations in the world, Scott Base has hosted many aspiring short film makers over the past 60 years. But we’ve never be fortunate enough to have a whole film festival available to the staff and scientists working on the New Zealand Antarctic Research Programme – so from all of us at Antarctica New Zealand – thanks!”

All of the films and music videos will compete for a range of awards and prizes (valued at more than $35,000) to be presented at the Auckland Opening Night and Awards Ceremony at The Civic on 1 October. As New Zealand’s first Academy Awards-accredited film festival, the winners of the Lightbox Best Film Award and the Best International Film Award will become qualified to enter the Academy Awards®.

Full programme information and details about the films is now live here: http://www.showmeshorts.co.nz/programme/