Six student short films from the Australian Film Television and Radio School will screen in a specially designated program at the 2012 Cannes Film Festival.
Cinema des Antipodes is an organisation directed by Bernard Bories that screens and supports Australian and New Zealand films in France. Its non-competitive program runs parallel to the Cannes Film Festival main program.
The dedicated AFTRS session consists of six films including writer/director Ben Matthews' Emily, which is currently in the running for a Student Oscar in the Best Foreign Film category. The psychological thriller examines teen suicide from the perspective of a parent.
Meryl Tankard, the creator of the Sydney Olympics opening ceremony also has a film in the program. Moth, which stars Sophie Lowe, is a story inspired by accounts from Australian reform schools in the 60's and 70's.
For a complete list of films, see below:
Moth
Written by Alana Valentine & Meryl Tankard (Graduate Diploma Directing 2010)
Directed by Meryl Tankard
Stars Sophie Lowe and Madeleine Madden. Moth is the story of three young women's determination to be free, and is inspired by the stories from many reform schools in Australia in the 60's and 70's, and the brutal methods used to discipline the girls.
Playground
Written & Directed by Ricardo Skaff (Graduate Diploma Directing, 2010)
A man who lives alone in an isolated miserable existence, starts to hear voices who lead him to an abandoned, hidden playground. He finds himself rediscovering the simple pleasures of happier times and the pure and unadulterated joys of a forgotten childhood.
Emily
Written and Directed by Ben Mathews (Graduate Diploma Directing 2010 and also a current Screenwriting student at AFTRS)
A psychological-thriller that grapples with the issue of teen suicide, exploring the situation from the persecutive of the parent.
Inferno
Written & Directed by Stephen McCallum (Graduate Diploma Directing, 2011)
After a failed escape attempt from their hellish colonial prison, four Irish convicts await a punishment of 300 lashes at dawn. When the first of their number dies on the triangle before the lashes are complete, the three remaining prisoners are faced with the promise of an agonising death by the whip. To escape this suffering the convicts concoct a plan where they have to commit murder in order to get hanged.
The Last Match
Written by Tom Keele & Julian Shaw (Graduate Diploma Directing, 2011 and also a current AFTRS Master of Screen Arts (MSA) student)
Directed by Julian Shaw
1989: the World Wrestling Federation is taking over the globe one VHS tape at a time. This is bad news for Val Georges (Craig McLachlan), a middle-aged wrestling promoter who has fallen on hard times. 'The Streak', Val's one genuine star, is threatening to jump ship to a rival promoter (Marcus Graham) and his arena is being foreclosed. Val has one night to save his empire, or face the end.
The Love Song of Iskra Prufrock
Written and Directed by Lucy Gaffy (Graduate Diploma Directing 2009 and also a current AFTRS Master of Screen Arts (MSA) student)
Iskra is a Croatian refugee and radiologist who works in an inner-city. In an effort to recover from her violent past, Iskra has made her life one of ritual. But she finds that her new life is a lonely one, until she meets Leo.