INTERFILM 38 International Short Film Festival Berlin
15 - 20 November 2022

The Finalists

For the ninth time running interfilm presents international screenplays for short fiction films by young filmmakers. Eight authors from Denmark, France, Germany, Israel, Kenya, Netherlands, Philippines and Romania have the opportunity to present their scripts to an audience.

Continue reading to find out more about the eight participants of the Script Pitch and their scripts and meet them when they present their projects on Saturday, 19th November 2022 at 11:00 at the pitching sessions in Haus 13! 

Bogdan Drumea / Rumänien

Bogdan Drumea is an aspirant filmmaker from Bucharest. He studies Screenwriting for MA Degree at  UNATC and in 2017 co-founded a video production company called Matchbox Film. His short films - INTERFERENCE, DIM LIGHT and THE HOODS could be found on the CINEPUB platform. Bogdan maintains a keen interest for coming of age worlds and powerful stories of youth. He is in  pre-production with another short film called GOOD MORNING, a story about two estranged  brothers.

SLEEPS

A story about two souls who are seeking for a bit of closure. Cristina, a young pregnant woman  meets a street child named Elvis in her apartment building and she decides to help him. The two of  them will soon discover that this encounter could be something that they maybe needed the most. 

Wanjeri Gakuru / Kenia

Wanjeri Gakuru is a journalist, essayist and filmmaker. She co-wrote award-winning feature film, SUPA MODO (2018) which accrued 44 awards and nominations internationally and Kenya's first Netflix TV series, COUNTRY QUEEN. Wanjeri is the Partnerships Director of African film collective, Rogue Film Society and has worked as a curator on various literary, film and art projects including Love Letters to Cinema (2022) and Mengi Mengi Film Club (2022).

TRANSACTION

Tired of being overlooked all her life, WAKS, a plump, overcontrolling Nairobi girl, hires a male sex worker to deflower her on the night of her 19th birthday.

(C) Twain Credit

Judith Rose Gyabaah / Deutschland

Born in the Blackforest into a German-Ghanaian family, Judith Rose Gyabaah soon discovered storytelling as a means to build bridges between her cultures and to expand boundaries. In 2016, she explored the traces of German colonialism in Namibia and Cameroon. Since 2019, she studies screenwriting at Filmuniversity Babelsberg. She participated in the UFA serial camp with her German-Ghanaian thriller series AGBOGBLOSHIE. In her work, she focuses on social-political issues through the lense of genre.

POEM OF POTTED PLANTS

Due to an unwanted pregnancy, a young black woman must confront her fear of motherhood, while having to face the hopes of her adoptive mother, who could never bear children of her own. She decides to terminate the pregnancy. POEM OF POTTED PLANTS is a poetic short drama about the complexity of our feelings towards motherhood.

Mathilde Jouaud / Frankreich

Mathilde Jouaud is a French writer-director. After doing her undergraduate studies in France in production management in cinema and TV, Mathilde moved to London to study filmmaking at the London Film School. Back in France, she now works as a production assistant in the film and tv industry. She directed POUR MON FILS (For my son) as her graduation project. CUTLERIES is her second short film project.

CUTLERIES

Soline, 12, notices the disappearance of her mother, after a big fight with her husband.Terrified by her father, Soline decides to run away from her home. During those few hours by herself, Soline takes her first steps, suddenly and violently,into adulthood and needs to learn how to fight for her safety.

Shannon Lester Cristal Paraico / Philippinen

Gay and a native of the Manila slums, Cristal is no stranger to the harsh realities of life. The human experience and its many complexities triumph through his stories. He completed his Bachelor of Arts in Digital Filmmaking at the School of Design and Arts of De La Salle-College of Saint Benilde as a scholar. He was nominated for Best Short Film in the Philippines' oldest award-giving body for cinema, the 68th Filipino Academy of Movie Arts and Sciences (FAMAS Awards).

# BAGETS RIDER FREE HD

Young. Wild. Exploited. When an old private video of Bryan goes viral online, the 19-year-old willful food delivery rider in a big city tries to reclaim the image of his body. This is a brutal coming-of-age Filipino short film about growing up in today's world of social media, pornography, and commerce. '#bagets rider FREE HD' depicts a teenager's desire to be seen and unseen as well as what it is like to be devoured digitally and in the real world—a story we cannot skip and scroll away from.

 

Hilke Rönnfeldt / Dänemark

HILKE RÖNNFELDT, born in Northern Germany with Danish-Icelandic roots, graduated as screenwriter in Sweden and is a part of independent film collective Super16 in Copenhagen as a director. She is a Berlinale Talents (2021), European Short Pitch (2020), Screenwriting Lab Filmfund Hamburg (2019) alumna. Her films have screened at several international film festivals.

Essential for her to make films: To be real and aim for the heart.

She has a strong faith in the poetic capabilities of the image.

DEEP SEA BLUE

When a ship’s officer accidentally and unauthorized crosses a sea border, she is suddenly confronted with that - even if invisible at first sight - her entire life on board is filled with borders and separation, which she must now learn to cross, to restore unity.

Gaya von Schwarze / Israel, Deutschland

Gaya von Schwarze was born in Jerusalem in 1994 and grew up in Tel Aviv. She has been developing her fingerprint as a filmmaker since childhood, both by making her own shorts with school friends and by working on professional film sets. Prior to her arrival in Berlin she has been volunteering in a school for disabled youth at risk, after being released from the Army for pacifistic reasons.

Gaya has been studying directing at the DFFB since 2016. Her student film LEARN TO SWIM was premiered on Festival de San Sebastian. At the moment she is working as an editor of a feature film directed by Michael Klier.

GOLDEN

A woman with withdrawal symptoms bursts into the kitchen of the “Golden” club in Tel Aviv and presents Hashim, the Sudanese cook, with a moral dilemma.

Veerle de Wilde / Niederlande

Veerle De Wilde is a Dutch-Belgian filmmaker based in Ghent. After studying psychology she worked as a psychotherapist for several years, while she continued to explore her love for cinema. In 2015 she enrolled in film school at KASK School of Arts. She graduated in 2020 with the short film SPACEBOY, which has since been selected for film festivals around the world and has won several awards. Currently Veerle is preparing her next short film ULTRAVIOLET, and is developing her feature film debut.

ULTRAVIOLET

A young teenage girl struggles to come to terms with her mother’s psychological problems as she searches for her own female identity.

(C) Ruben Accou