Shattered Past

Five animated shorts from Flanders are running in the national competition of Anima (17-26 February), the annual animation celebration that takes place in Brussels. Five more films are screening in a Belgian panorama, while co-production The Monster of Nix by Rosto receives a special screening.

Anima is showcasing a wide variety of animation talent from Flanders this year. In the national competition, there's Bruno Wouters' Daddy, Don’t Forget Your Glasses, Roman Klochkov's Natasha, Boris Sverlow's VAF Wildcard-winning Shattered Past, Yves Bex's The Appointment and Tristan Morelle's The Secret Child.

Guy Lee Thys’ new feature Mixed Kebab and Geoffrey Enthoven’s award-winning Come As You Are have been selected for the Cinequest Film Festival (28 February-11 March) in California. Three shorts also made it to the pioneering fest's final line-up: Kevin Meul’s The Extraordinary Life of Rocky, Boris Sverlow’s Shattered Past and Nicolas Daenens’ 27.

Mixed Kebab, which will premiere internationally in the Global Landscapes Competition of the festival, is praised by Cinequest’s Terra Wood for the way the ‘electrifying and multicultural cast brilliantly captures courage, tolerance and the beauty of love conquering hate’. Geoffrey Enthoven returns to Cinequest after his previous feature The Over the Hill Band was presented as part of the 2010 edition of the fest.

The 17th edition of the Leuven International Short Film Festival (3-10 December) again highlights talented short cinema from Flanders. With a strong Flemish short film competition, the VAF Wildcards and a number of professional activities, Leuven is for a short time the epicenter of short cinema in Flanders.

2011 has been a strong year for Flemish shorts with the Cannes Jury Award for Wannes Destoop’s Swimsuit 46 and the Grand Prize in Valladolid for Kevin Meul’s The Extraordinary Life of Rocky. Now the IKL fest has selected 20 short films from promising directors who may give us a new wave of international Awards in the future.

The Flanders Audiovisual Fund (VAF) has once again awarded five promising graduation filmmakers with a VAF Wildcard. This year’s winners are Kenneth Mercken’s The Letter and Adil El Arbi & Bilall Fallah’s Brothers in the fiction category, Kenneth Michiels’s Twenty-One + Seven and Jeremy De Ryckere’s The Heir for Documentary and Boris Sverlow’sShattered Past for Animation.

The VAF Wildcards are aimed at giving young filmmaking talent a chance to embark on a first professional project by providing a (starting) budget of €40,000 or €60,000, plus a professional coach. Now in its seventh edition, the VAF Wildcards have quickly become the most important awards in Flanders.