Bonfire, a new 20-minute short film, recently completed through the NSW FTO’s Young Filmmakers Fund, has been selected to screen in competition at the Budapest Short Film Festival in Hungary
The film, which is about a young girl’s troubled relationship with her father, will screen with some of the worlds best new short films, selected from some 619 international entries. The festival is fast becoming Eastern Europe ’s pre-eminent short film event.
Writer/Director Melissa Anastasi is thrilled that the film will be premiering at the festival.
“Bonfire is very much about the migrant experience and how that affects identity and relationships,” Anastasi said. “I think it has universal appeal. It is about the fragility of people, and how, when hurt, they continue to hurt others until something stops them, and they are forced to take stock of their lives.”
Shot with mostly non-actors (with the exception of television and theatre great, Lex Marinos), the multilingual film was shot in Bankstown , in Sydney
“We had to spend a lot of time on some of the highly emotional sequences, those containing simulated violence, grief, and those involving the girls pet chook, which meets an untimely end in the film,” she said.
The film has also been pre-selected for the International Short Film Festival in Drama , Greece Budapest
[release from Metro Screen]