Best Works in May 2022 Programme
Verona
"Best Romance", "Best Director Debut"
Synopsis:
Two families on neighboring farms on the border between Brazil and Uruguay. Decades drive these people away. The physical proximity is separated by a fence and the set of prejudices, inexplicable hatred and lack of generosity. In the end of the year, between Christmas and New Year, the families gather on their respective farms. What nobody knows is that a love between two young people is about to break this barrier that is much bigger than the fence that divides the fields. The passion between Rodrigo and Juliana could be the point of recovery for a relationship marked by so many years of hatred, but, like Shakespeare's original story, the human being is much more complex and inexplicable. Whether in Verona, Italy, or on a border farm. Tragedy lives inside people and is sometimes impossible to control...
Official Website
Directed by:
Ane Siderman
The Savior of Coney Island
"Best Short Documentary"
Synopsis:
Meet Dick Zigun, “Honorary Mayor of Coney Island” and learn about the beginnings of Coney Island USA.
Under Dick, Coney Island USA developed and produced a number of beloved summer programs including the Mermaid Parade and the Coney Island Circus Sideshow.
Dick moved to Coney Island in 1979, when the historic amusement park was just getting by on life support. At that time Coney Island was a scary place to be, but Dick had a vision and over time has been able to see his vision come to pass.
Dick also talks at length about Lillie Santangelo and her famous Wax Musee where Coney Island USA was born.
Official Website
Directed by:
Gary Beeber
Songs Of The Day After
"Best Composer"
Synopsis:
Emerging from the mist of the past, six characters meet in the ethereal town of Bronze Bell Sorrow, the city of last chance. Only one of them is a living human being; the five others hide diverse identities. Anamorphic time and space are the stage on which they confront each other and themselves. Murderers, executioners, victims…who are they really? Behind the crimes they have committed are simply lost creatures wishing desperately to be members of humanity, even for the short time of a card game.
Directed by:
Barbara Glas
In casa con Claude 2.0 
"Best LGBTQ+ Film"
Synopsis:
A close interrogation between a police commissioner and Yves, a gay, young escort living between alcohol, drugs and prostitution, who denounced himself of Claude's murder.
What are the reasons that led Yves to kill Claude?
a good boy with whom he had a relationship?
The surprising and exciting answer will only be discovered at the end.
IMDb page
Directed by:
Giuseppe Bucci
The Arrangement
"Best Feature Film", "Best Cinematography", "Best Thriller"
Synopsis:
Two lonely detectives investigate a series of mysterious midnight deaths. The first victim has a picture of her with the next, and with each death the picture changes to show the next victim, sending the detectives on a paranoid journey into the victim's past.
Official Instagram
Directed by:
Jake Hunsicker
Stop the Bus
"Best Actor"
Synopsis:
A young woman wakes up tied in an underground parking lot. To save her life, she will have to submit to a game and discover her true nature.
Official Website
Directed by:
David Trujillo
Best Actor:
Arnaud Caron
Map of the World
"Best Photography"
Synopsis:
MAP OF THE WORLD is a conceptual photography series that started with a single picture of my eyes, taken during the isolation of quarantine. The series would grow as I started to blend images of patterns, places and things that I love across my face. Most importantly, maps of the world would adorn my likeness, to signify that we would soon be able to travel and take this world back again.
Official Website
Photography by:
Daniel Corey
The Mobster
"Best Short Screenplay"
Synopsis:
Lucca, a 30-year-old man fanatic about the Italian mafia universe, has strange and unnecessarily dramatic habits: He
has henchmen, he walks like a mob boss, cultivates meaningless rivalries, and no one knows exactly what he does. His Friend
Juan has an important job interview and asks him to take care of his son, Gustavo.
Lucca takes Gustavo to lunch, accompanied by his two henchmen. One of them is fully aboard the gangster “trip” of
Lucca. The other looks at the situation from a more realistic perspective. Everything is fine until Gustavo grabs the last piece of pizza.
The protagonist then has no options, other than retaliation, given the clear disrespect he suffered. He takes the boy to a location abandoned to shoot him. But after dramatic speeches, he ends up having his heart touched by the boy and lets him go, as long as the kid leaves town.
Written by:
Cesar Gallego
Empty Shelf
"Best Original Screenplay", "Best Actress"
Synopsis:
A talented student from the North-East of England returns home after the death of her mother. Her life now dominated by absences, she struggles to reconnect with her father, and is overwhelmed with the decision between her friends and family back home and her future in London.
Official Website
Directed by:
Matthew Lee
Best Actress:
Izzy Roy
Cowgirls and Indians
"Best Color Editing", "Best Original Score", "Best Editing"
Synopsis:
Retired cowgirl Callie attends the funeral of a former lover on an Indian reservation. She meets his family and goes on a crazy adventure to learn what happened to her friend and their relationship.
Official Facebook
Directed by:
Kate Davis
Pastiche
"Best Short Film", "Best Horror", "Best Makeup", "Best Director", "Best Poster"
Synopsis:
After a home invasion, a depressed father must save his family, or they'll be premiered in the prime time news.
Official Website
Directed by:
Shivaan Makker
A Survivor Amongst Survivors PT1
"Best BLM Film", "Best Web Series"
Synopsis:
'Fighting For His Life' - The Journey from an Advanced Prostate cancer survivor to Advocating for Fellow Cancer Survivors...
A documentary about Advanced Prostate Cancer examined through the eyes of a patient, carer and medical professionals...
Official Website
Directed by:
Alfred Samuels
Alder
"Best Fantasy"
Synopsis:
Alder is a guardian spirit that protects the forest and nature. It takes the shape of a female-tree form embodying the Alder tree’s inner qualities of protection against malevolent beings and humans.
When a handsome young forager strays into Alder’s glade, it opens the possibility of changing its destiny. It longs for being loved and for the intimacy of a touch, like humans do. Very aware of the high price to pay for falling in love with a human its dilemma and vulnerability are exposed.
Every time the forager clips a branch or steals berries, it manifests in Alder’s pain and it bleeding orange sap. Alder encounters him in the woods and seduces him, but will her heart overcome her loyalty to the forest?
Directed by:
Vanda Ladeira
4
"Best Dance Video"
Synopsis:
4 is an experimental short film featuring music & dance that brings the audience to a research space to identify the source of balance and proportions in the combined art forms. Two pianists and two dancers travel together in a retro-futuristic quest for knowledge through pulse and rhythm, creating a progressive and hypnotic piece, and placing the piano as a common operating table for their interaction. The music features extended piano techniques in an intense, minimalist score.
Official Facebook
Directed by:
Mariana Palacios and Adrián del Arroyo
The loneliness of those who do not exist
"Best COVID-19 Film"
Synopsis:
This is the story of how the 'Acompañando-T' volunteer program fights unwanted loneliness in the heart of Emptied Spain.
Official Website
Directed by:
Alfonso Burgos Risco
The Mole Men
"Best Feature Screenplay"
Synopsis:
Sergeant Al Ramon and Officer Luis Mendez know that policing New York City essentially means managing chaos. The volume of radio calls for police service makes it virtually impossible to patrol and enforce the law for every infraction of state penal law. Beneath the city, policing is even more challenging. Officers patrolling Transit Manhattan South face the same hazards as street crime cops, but the tunnels and trains make it much more difficult to affect an apprehension; the transit systems provides criminals with an elaborate labyrinth that help them elude to police.
When Sergeant Ramon is ordered to tighten discipline and improve the transit cops' performance through the N.Y.P.D's tickets and arrests quotas, he faces a tough decision: motivate "activity" or lose his job due to department budget cuts. Watching his platoon every move is newly-assigned Inspector Dek, sent in to ensure transit officers meet the departments demands.
MoleMen, a dark, fictional comedy, is loosely based on the politics and policing in New York City. Follow Ramon and Mendez as they try to save their transit buddies' jobs. You'll experience the same day-to-day frustrations and pressures police officers feel to issue summonses and make the arrests that sell the public on efficient policing. MoleMen shows how quickly officers can lose touch with the public as they generate the quotas for which One Police Plaza and the mayor hunger.
Official Website
Written by:
Antonio Arecibo
Beautiful Violence
"Best Supporting Actor"
Synopsis:
A powerful and gripping story about a white terminally ill businessman who uses racism to force an African American man he never met before to kill him in order for his family receive his life insurance money.
Official Website
Directed by:
Joey Medina
Best Supporting Actor
Eric Blake
Lucy Palustris: The Dinner Party
"Best ECO Work", "Best Symbolic Film"
Synopsis:
The film creeps into issues of the Anthropocene while moving deeper into the psychological landscape of Lucy Palustris, the artist’s alter-ego. A solitary woman in the wetlands of southern Ontario, Lucy is a manifestation of our human psyche and our animal selves. Her role is ambiguous: Is she an agency of care, a psychologically (de)-stabilizing force or an intrusive presence? Illogical associations convey the strangeness and intensity of a dream. Disjuncture and incongruity colour the protagonist’s actions and costume within her surroundings, revealing the beauty and brutality of a degraded landscape and our transient existence within it. The film attempts to uncover something about who we are and how we have come to a tipping point of crisis. Fecundity, violence and death interweave. A call for restitution plays out like a Sisyphean gesture where tenacity and futility reign.
Official Website
Directed by:
Patricia Coates
If I Could Ride
"Best Drama", "Best Trailer"
Synopsis:
The story is about two teenage girls with totally different backgrounds. Jodie Davis was born with a physical disability. She lives with her mother and grandfather on a dilapidated old farm. After the recent passing of her dad, Jodie`s mom Sandy works two jobs to make ends meet. Jodie`s first love is to someday ride horses and eventually compete in horse shows. But physical disabilities and financial problems make this vision quite impossible.
Bridgett Van Heusen lives a complete opposite life. She resides on a beautiful farm and has a championship horse, as well as a talented horse trainer named Jimmy. She is very spoiled and wants for nothing. Both of her parents are involved in everything but their daughters love. Bridgett is an extremely talented rider.
Witness how fate brings together these two distinctly different young girls. See the magnificence of unconditional love that transcends physical and emotional trials throughout the film. A roller coaster of emotions will consume the viewer. A family film with many of life`s lessons that can be enjoyed by the entire family.
Official Website
Directed by:
Shawn Welling
Eggs
"Best Student Film", "Best Young Director", "Best Experimental Film", "Best No-Dialogue Film"
Synopsis:
A Man goes through life mechanically while the state eggs him on into submission and complicity.
Directed by:
Neel Menon
Faces of the Future
"Best Young Actor"
Synopsis:
A teenage bully sees his future self when his actions are confronted head on with the face of the future.
Directed by:
Micah Sanders Silva and Mortiz Johnson
Best Young Actor

Micah Sanders Silva

John Farrow - Hollywood’s Man in the Shadows
"Best Feature Documentary", "Best Director", "Best Producer", "Best Opening Credits", "Best Poster"
Synopsis:
John Farrow - Hollywood’s Man in the Shadows is the first documentary ever made about one of Hollywood’s most prolific yet forgotten filmmakers John Villiers Farrow (1904 - 1963). Part mystery, part biography, part film noir – the documentary follows the stranger than fiction story of this Australian born, Oscar-winning filmmaker.
One of Hollywood’s most enigmatic figures – Farrow was the director of some 50 films, a sailor, a poet, a war hero, a best-selling author, a religious scholar, a family man and a philanderer – a man who lived many lives - yet who left behind no memoirs, no interviews and no archival footage – and who today is only a shadow in the pages of film history.
Directed by:
Frans Vandenburg and Claude Gonzalez
A Conclusion
"Best Animation"

Synopsis:
In a dilemma where one is faced with a choice between the past and the future, the past often has to make way for the future, despite the pain it causes.
The film 'Conclusion' shows a similar dilemma of a man whose daughter's marriage is knocking on the door while his mother is in Ventilation with no chances of survival. Ultimately the man lets his mother go, so his daughter's marriage doesn't get affected.
Official Website
Directed by:
Sreemon Das
Sorrow
"Best Black & White Film"

Synopsis:
In a life full of struggles, the old man finally encounters one that he cannot overcome. For the first time, he is unable to fight back. Past, present, and future are torturing his mind. There is no escape, no way out. He's trying to ignore anxious thoughts but is repeatedly brought back to them.
Official Website
Directed by:
Stefan Teofilovic
The Prayer Warrior
"Best Young Actress"

Synopsis:
Twelve-year-old Star often carries the world on her fragile, prepubescent shoulders. Learning the Word of God from the church and her grandmother, she uses it to keep her father Cordell from turning back to the streets; the streets that have claimed her uncle’s life and caused her father to miss the last five years of her life while he served time in prison. Will her faith be enough to bring her father to Christ?
Directed by:
 Marquita Owens Robinson
The Path of Stones
"Best Educational Film"

Synopsis:
“The Path Of Stones” reflects on the relationships and social spaces built from the popularization of psychoactive substances “crack” and “basuco”, having as reference, for that, the cities of Salvador and São Paulo, in Brazil, and Bogotá and Medellín, Colombia. In a lyrical way, prioritizing a psychological approach, the documentary proposes a reflection a historical journey in the use of psychoactive substances that that, pari passu, from its representations, places us before ourselves, before the other, before life.
Official Instagram
Directed by:
Harrison Araújo
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