RIDM Award Winners: Short films

Cinéma Public is proud to partner with the Rencontres internationales du documentaire de Montréal (RIDM) to present some of the award-winning films from the festival’s 27th edition. This program features the winners of the short and medium-length film competitions.

A STONE’S THROW

Razan AlSalah / 2024 / Québec (Canada), Palestine, Lebanon / 40 min / Arabic, English / Best National Short or Medium-Length

“Relocated”, “expatriated”, and “dispersed” are adjectives that define the life of Amine, an old Palestinian man who has been exiled for the first time from his land and the second time from his job. His history is that of Palestine and its decades of resistance. Using cyber aerial shots, A Stone’s Throw constructs a map of a Palestine inaccessible other than via the false objectivity of Google Earth, evoking both an impersonal, dehumanizing military visual and the rebellious sense of freedom generated by entering forbidden zones. A polyphony of voices and texts written like computer codes are juxtaposed with images, offering viewers various points of entry into the reality of a stolen land and a fragmented people. (AJL)

SOUS LE SOLEIL EXACTEMENT

Noa Blanche Beschorner / 2024 / Québec (Canada), Germany / 14 min / German / Special Jury Prize, National Short or Medium-Length Film

Sous le soleil exactement seems to merge scattered memories from Germany and Montreal into a single, undefined place. Divided into four language exercises around the words for “departure”, “arrival”, “return”, and “reside”, several oral scenarios punctuate the film with surprising narrative originality. This meditative, experimental documentary leaves room for the subtly evocative power of editing and brings together drawings, road maps, photographs, TV clips, and shots filmed in 16 mm by an inspired camera. Creating ephemeral, fleeting urban poetry, the filmmaker documents empty spaces and places conducive to encounters, exposing, in snatches, the details of a presence in motion. (HSB)

RAZEH-DEL

Maryam Tafakory / 2024 / Iran, United Kingdom, Italy / 28 min / Farsi / Best International Short or Medium-Length

The first newspaper for and by women in Iran, Zan had a brief but eventful existence from July 1998 to April 1999. In Razeh-del, Maryam Tafakory tells the story of two female students who decided to send the newspaper a letter hoping to be published. True to the cinematic language she has come to be associated with, the filmmaker narrates this story in writing, superimposing text over numerous archive images of Iranian films. The film is aged; the digital images looking worn. The many stylistic devices that accompany and alter these images that are already weakened by time remind us of their precariousness, their significance, and the efforts and risks behind their existence and preservation. (AJL)

ARCHIPELAGO OF EARTHEN BONES — TO BUNYA

Malena Szlam / 2024 / Québec (Canada), Australia, Chile / 20 min / no dialogues / Special Jury Mention in the National Short and Medium-Lenght Film Competition

Starting at the residual light from the eruption of the Hunga Tonga submarine volcano in the heart of the Pacific Ocean to Mount Beerwah and the Bunya Mountains in Australia, Archipelago of Earthen Bones — To Bunya brings together 16mm images from a variety of volcanic sites. The film, composed of close-ups and numerous juxtaposed images, creates an impressionistic geology. To add to this composite sensory atmosphere, the sites’ soundscapes blend with one created by Australian composer and artist Lawrence English. This approach offers a more evocative than realistic vision of these natural landscapes, inviting an alternative contemplation of nature and, more specifically, of these places imbued with a grandiose beauty, but also a latent destructive danger. (AJL)

Please note that the screenings on December 7 and 8 are Cinéma Public presentations, and that passports, accreditations and ticket books produced by the RIDM will not be accepted.