European Short Film Competition Programme 2

How To Be a Human Being (LIT 2022)
Town Hall Square (D 2023)
Those Whoe Follow (D 2023)
Sirens (I 2022)
Super (GR 2022)

How To Be a Human Being | Kaip būti žmogumi

Lithuania 2022 – 15:19 min – Director: Jorė Janavičiūtė

During a conference in a hotel, a woman in her mid-thirties meets a man that she used to date in her teenage years. She accuses him of ‘date-rape’ back then. She works at the conference and has to help him prepare for the presentation. They start to talk. It turns out that things were different than she thought for many years.

Jorė Janavičiūtė

Jorė Janavičiūtė has a BA in Journalism from Vilnius University (2014), has completed a Film Production course in European Film College in Denmark (2015) and holds a Film Directing MA from Lithuanian Academy of Music and Theater (2018). She is currently developing new film projects, lecturing at Vilnius University, writing articles for Lithuanian media, moreover, working as Junior Programmer in Vilnius International Short Film Festival and in casting on film, TV, and commercial productions.



Town Hall Square

Germany 2023 – 08:35 min – Director: Christian Kaufmann

Bernard works behind the windows of a ticket booth at the Town Hall Square subway station and is waiting for something he seems to have forgotten. One day, however, a little tiger shows up and turns Bernard’s orderly life upside down. A short film about an unexpected visitor, annoying radio songs and the lust for life!

Christian Kaufmann

Christian Kaufmann was born in Bonn in 1993 and studied Media Design in cologne. After finishing his studies in 2015, he worked as an Motion Designer for multiple television productions. In 2016, he began studying Animation at Filmakademie Baden-Württemberg. Till his diploma in 2022 he created several animated shorts.



Those Who Follow

Germany 2023 – 28:24 min – Director: Frederic Kau

Since joining the special forces, Mirko’s life has been torn between his family and his unit. When the suspicion suddenly arises that his girlfriend Rabea might have reported a radical right-wing chat message from the unit to Internal Affairs, Mirko is in danger of losing both.

Frederic Kau

Frederic Kau, who grew up in Munich, studied political science at Cambridge University and initially worked as a management consultant. However, he had to admit that he could no longer ignore his passion for film and decided to try out the various areas of filmmaking at the London Film School. There he came to the understanding that directing should be the focus of his filmmaking and thus specialized in directing at the Hamburg Media School.



Sirens

Italy 2022 – 13:23 min – Director: Ilaria Di Carlo

Monolithic power plants; billowing columns of smoke; the backdrop of a red sun. Sirens captures Germany’s coal-fired power plants in their final years of generating energy. Shot entirely from helicopters, the film takes us on a journey through industrial wastelands, thus recalling the passage of Ulysses’ boat through the Sirens’ strait. An odyssey through the dystopian industrial world that has left a permanent mark on earth’s ecosphere.

Ilaria Di Carlo

Ilaria Di Carlo is an Italian artist and filmmaker based in Berlin.
She studied at Central Saint Martins College of Art in London and at the Fine Arts Academy in Rome. Her visually driven experimental films explore the role of myth and poetry as a reflection on contemporary life, while focusing on the themes of journey and identity in relation to spaces, landscapes, and architecture. Her short films won over 40 awards including best short film at Torino Film Festival and the Barbara Aronofsky Latham Award at the Ann Arbor Film Festival.



Super

Greece 2022 – 19:42 min – Director: Nikolas Kouloglou

Penny and James meet at the supermarket for their first date. They stroll through the aisles and talk about their favorite fruit, psychoanalysis and their most secret fantasies. In the end, they have a confession to make. They are already in a relationship. With each other.

Nikolas Kouloglou

Nikolas Kouloglou was born in Athens, Greece in 1989 and undertook Film Studies in Los Angeles (U.S.C.) and Athens. He has worked as a director, copywriter and voice actor for commercial films, as well as an Assistant Director in cinema, most notably in All the Fires the Fire (2019, Efthimis Kosemud Sanidis), which won the Prix Spécial du Jury at the Clermont- Ferrand Festival 2020. His first two feature films as a writer are currently in development, in addition to a period drama mini-series for domestic and international distribution.