Palme d’or Short Film Cannes 2019: THE DISTANCE BETWEEN US AND THE SKY © Vasilis Kekatos
For the official Cannes Competition, the 2019 Selection Commission has selected eleven short films from 4240 submissions with a running time between 7 and 15 minutes. These included nine short fiction films, one short documentary and one short animation from Albania, Argentina (2 films), France (4 including co-productions), Finland, Greece, Israel (2 including co-productions), Ukraine, Sweden and the USA.
Presided by Claire Denis, the jury of the official short film competition and the Cinéfondation announced their decisions today:
PALME D’OR DU COURT MÉTRAGE: THE DISTANCE BETWEEN US AND THE SKY, Vasilis Kekatos, GR/F
MENTION SPÉCIALE – COURT MÉTRAGE: MONSTRUO DIOS, Agustina San Martin, ARG
The Cinéfondation competition included 17 university films from Belgium, France (2), Great Britain, Austria, Palestinian Territories, Poland, Russia, Hungary, Singapore, South Korea, Slovakia, the Czech Republic and the USA (2).
The winners are
PREMIER PRIX: MANO A MANO by Louise Courvoisier, La CinéFabrique (F)
DEUXIÈME PRIX: HIẾU by Richard Van, California Institute of the Arts (USA)
TROISIÈME PRIX ex aequo: AMBIENCE by Wisam Al Jafari, Dar Al-Kalima University College of Arts (Palestine) and DUSZYCZKA (THE LITTLE SOUL) by Barbara Rupik, The Polish National Film, Television and Theatre School in Lodz
As part of the Quinzaine des Réalisateurs, the Prix Illy du court métrage also went to the short film STAY AWAKE, BE READY by Phan Thien An (Vietnam).
And in the Semaine de la Critique, IKKI ILLA MEINT (No Evil Meant) by Andrias Høgenni (Faroe Islands/DK) was awarded the Prix Canal+ and SHE RUNS by Qiu Yang (China/F) the Prix Découverte Leitz Cine.
In the feature film competition, by the way, two short film makers received awards for feature-length debut films: Mati Diop received the Grand Prix for ATLANTIQUE (in 2009 she shot the short documentary ATLANTIQUES on a similar theme) and Ladj Ly, who received a Prix du Jury for the long version of his 2018 short LES MISÉRABLES.
The short films in the competitions of the 72nd Festival de Cannes: press release 19 April 2019
Cinéfondation winners: press release 23 May 2019
All Palmarès in the official competition: press release 25 May 2019