Stories and styles of the Next Generation

For the fifth time, German Films and FFA  are presenting together the Next Generation Short Tiger programme with a total of twelve new short films from German film schools. The short films in the Next Generation Short Tiger program were selected from 60 submissions from 13 film schools and the 50 films that were submitted for the Short Tiger competition. The expert jury consisted of Academy Award winner Caroline Link, Alexandra Gramatke (KurzFilmAgentur Hamburg), and Gregory Theile (CEO Kinopolis/Theile Group).

"That the Next Generation Short Tiger program offers a great variety of films with a high artistic standard is almost a matter of course“, says Martin Scheuring, Project Coordinator for Next Generation. "By now, word about this has spread so far that we are moving to the largest available auditorium in the Marché du Film because we never had enough seats for everyone in the past years."

Among the talents to celebrate a premiere during the screening of the Next Generation Short Tiger reel at the Olympia cinema in the Rue d'Antibes is Oscar nominee Stefan Gieren from Hamburg who directed the ambitious docudrama short 3 Postcards. DFFB student Zora Rux also focuses on the problems of refugees in her short film Safe Space while Michael Binz' Herman the German and Lure by Linda Luitz and Wunna Winter feature people who live on the fringes of society.

Not Too Early, Not Too Late by Miraz Bezar and Jacob Frey's The Present explore the sensitivities and dreams of children, while Pascal Flörks looks back on his late grandfather's life in Bär. Animals and the various ways of handling them are a topic in Qalqilya's Zoo by Thomas Toth and Michael Schaff, in Andreas Hykade's animated film Nuggets, and also in the black-and-white short film Phobos by Noah Schuller. The force and the circular character of nature are invoked in the dramatic animation film Wrapped by Roman Kälin, Falko Paeper, and Florian Wittmann while Verena Klinger and Robert Banning show a loving husband making a drastic sacrifice on behalf of his wife in their inventive stop-motion animation Whole.

After the premiere in Cannes, German Films will show the short film program at other international festivals.

16 May 2015, by Birgit Heidsiek