STFF Shorts 2017 proudly announces the top 11 finalist films!
We are so glad to receive 200+ submissions! We would like to thank to all applicants.
Our short film committee spent great amount of time to see every submitted film and long and exciting conversations afterward. We can confess that it was really hard to choose top 10 finalists, so we ended up choosing 11. After all, it was a great pleasure to us.
These 11 films were screened in short films session during the festival. Tufan Tastan, the director of winner film "Words Fly Away", was going to joining us at the screening for the Q&A session. Unfortunately, due to some diplomatic crises between Turkey and USA, they could not get the visa, so he sent us a video instead.
Congratulations to the directors, actors and actresses and anyone who gave effort to make it happen these top 11 films that are listed below! Thank you for the participation of all directors who are submitted their films to the competition. And of course thanks to all jury members who gave great effort to evaluate short films!
TRUCK
CANBERT YERGUZ | TURKEY | 2017
Besim, who set out on a long interprovincial journey with the truck escrowed to him, is stuck in the middle of a deserted road in the heart of Anatolia because of an engine breakdown. His efforts to find a mechanic for the truck, fearing that it will catch on fire, becomes more and more complicated with the arrival of kids, a flock of stray sheep, a peasant with a scooter, other peasants with cars, and even more peasants with a tractor, women and the gendarme one after the other. The quarrel between the two enemy villages inflames because of the missing shepherd of the rambling flock; they scuffle and accuse each other of murdering the shepherd. Stuck with a truck which is about to start burning down, Besim is now struggling to stay out of the fight that pulls him in insistently, where no one listens to one another, and also to find someone with a good sense who will help him with his problem.
THE BEYOÄžLU MOVIE THEATRE
FERHAT OZMEN | TURKEY | 2017
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Serhat and Yunus are street children who are collecting and selling the empty beer bottles. One day, they see a poster of a movie named Ice Age while passing by Beyoğlu Sineması (The Cinema of Beyoğlu). Serhat admires the movie poster. He thinks about movie that night so he cannot sleep. The next day, he goes to see the movie poster again. He starts to find a way to see the movie...
SNOW CHERRY
TUNAHAN KURT | TURKEY | 2017
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Solmaz is a 15 years old girl who lives in a village out of the way in Kars with her family. She is mentally retarded. She lives with innocent smile on her face and she imitates what happens around her without query. Her only friend is her father’s horse, Fırat. Solmaz’s father Ali is a bulky, superstitious man who wants a male child passionately. For his male child passion he made his second marriage and he lives with his two wives. In tough winter conditions the family’s only transportation vehicle is a horse and a sled. One of the tough winter day, Ali’s second wife Emine who is seven months pregnant gets labor suddenly. Ali prepares the horse and sled quickly for go to city hospital in time. Ali’s first wife gets in a paddy and she doesn’t take Solmaz in the house. Ali is constrained includes Solmaz to the journey. Ali tries to go on short-cut. But snow is too rigid and weather is too cold. That’s why the horse’s leg has broken. Because of the tradition Ali shots the horse because of it’s broken leg. Solmaz innocent smile disappears because of her best friend Fırat is shot and killed by her father. The other tradition is pregnant woman gives birth to a male child who eats snow cherry before the birth. Ali sees a snow cherry tree when he tries to pull the sledge. He leaves the sledge and go to snow cherry tree. At the exact moment he takes a snow cherry on the tree his foot get caught in a pig trap. Solmaz imitates what she saw while Ali groan with pain.
1st Runner Up:
WATER BEDOUINS
YAVUZ PULLUKCU | TURKEY | 2014
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Central Marshes were a large complex of wetlands in Iraq that were part of the Tigris. The Ilısu Dam is a project of Turkey. But when it was finished it will destroy the marshes. Film is about how their lives and culture would change when it would finished. This situation violates human rights. The film tells the current water-related issues of the water Bedouins, who live in the swamp area at the point where the rivers Tigres and Euphrates flow into the sea, in the Persian Gulf, Iraq, and the dangers that one of the ancient settlements in Anatolia, Hasankeyf, is facing.
NISYAN
MEHMET MICIK | TURKEY | 2017
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An old man enters a supermarket and start looking for a special biscuit for his son.
ALL IN VAIN
VURAL UZUNDAG | TURKEY | 2017
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A family with three kids, in Istanbul, living in the opposite shore of modern city life. Though, their daily routines have similarities with the ones of city dwellers, the values they question and the consequences they undergo are the same. The lies that we tell ourselves to exist, conscience, the pain of coexistence, obligations developing out of habits, regret and the mutual destiny of humanity; bereavement!
2nd Runner Up:
GROUND LEVEL
AYRIS ALPTEKIN | TURKEY | 2017
Is it beyond ethical boundaries or a legitimate right to demand one's wage during a funeral? The old lady that Sevim nursed is dead. She has to demand her wage which is already belated for a few days. This wage issue that Sevim tried to figure out without overstating during all day becomes a huge incident for this upper middle class family due to the uncertainty of the payer of this month among the family members.
CEMILE'S OBSESSION
DENIZ OZDEN | TURKEY | 2017
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Cemile (59) who lives in a flat with her husband, cooks a full plate of dolma - a Turkish traditional food- for their new neighboors as part of a Turkish tradition. The unfamiliar names of the young new neighboors, Ari and Lorin, and the uncertain meatballs they bring to thank back Cemile for her kindness, make her start investigate about them.
STFF SHORTS
2017
TEAM
Ozgur Arman
Senay Cebioglu
Rana San
M. Burak Senol
Lisa Waagd
STFF SHORT FILM COMPETITION 2017 JURY MEMBERS
Nicole Pouchet
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Screenwriter
A former Broadway assistant director, screenwriter Nicole Pouchet is an avid film watcher who has studied film at Duke University and in programs at the Venice International Film Festival. Her sci-fi spec screenplays have earned the notice of industry titans including Finalist placement in 2017 Tracking Board Launchpad competition and Finalist placement in the ongoing 2017 PAGE International Screenwriting Awards.
Books from the novelist’s Elemental Myths paranormal romance series have ranked #1 on Amazon bestseller lists and won second prize in the 2013 Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award contest. Her latest manuscript won first place in a 2017 Romance Writers of America contest.
Justine Barda
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Senior Programmer at Seattle International Film Festival
Justine Barda is a senior programmer with the Seattle International Film Festival. She has also worked as a consultant to Sundance, the Dubai International Film Festival, and the Toronto International Film Festival. She currently teaches in the Film Studies Program at Seattle University.
Dan Doody
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 SIFF's Short Film Coordinator
Dan Doody received his BA in English from Western Washington University, and began working for Seattle International Film Festival in 1999. Since 2003 he has programmed short films for the festival, and two years later joined the feature film committee. He has served as SIFF's Short Film Coordinator for the past six years, being the festival's chief facilitator for its Oscar® qualifying ShortsFest Weekend.
Kirk Nordenstrom
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Producer
Seattle City Producer at 48 Hour Film Project