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Official Selection 4: GREY SKIES, GREEN ACRES
As urban spaces encroach on green places, some city mice long for the hills, while others find enterprising ways to thrive in the big, bad city. Take a break from the rat-race with these sweet and surprising tales from town and country.
| Clear Skies In May |
| A Japanese Ukiyo-e print book comes alive in lush animation. Floating birds, falling rain and a waiting geisha – hallmarks of the Edo Period artwork – pass an idle spring day together. |
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| Words (Les Mots) |
| In the midst of a divorce, a speech therapist seeks solace at the cottage he's in the midst of renovating. He swims. He visits the home improvement centre. He contemplates a Virgin Mary statue suspended over the lake. The quiet mourning of moving on. |
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| No pain, no gain (Pas de pain, pas de gain) |
| An urban huckster or a social entrepreneur? Denis Manzanno tells us how he manages to live day-to-day without using any money. Fact plays against fiction in this clever city tale, shot and completed in just 48 hours. |
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| 7.57 am-pm |
| Scenes of Paris' subway rush hour are cut with behind-the-scenes footage of a sold-out symphony performance at the Theatre des Champs-Élysées. The mystery connection between these two worlds exposes the disorienting pace of modern life. |
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| The Henhouse |
| A hungry, rain-soaked fox looks for shelter in the luxuries of The Hen House Café. But what must he give up in order to enjoy the “comforts” of city life? Beautiful animation reveals his plight in this charming urban allegory. |
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| Lord |
| It's a dog-eat-dog-world for two layabouts who make a dishonest living by holding people's pets for ransom. Award-winning filmmaker Adrian Sitaru's latest offering of life in the new EU surprises with its biting look at human nature. |
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| In Between |
| Water balances a boat that balances a woman who balances a tree. The fragile relationship between man and Mother Nature gets rocky in this quirky little experiment. |
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| Unearthing the Pen |
| Documentary cameras follow the plight of a young goatherd in northern Uganda who yearns to go to school. But 40 years ago, tribal elders buried a pen, placing a curse on the written word. The boy's fate is decided as the real source of the curse is revealed. |
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| The Cow Who Wanted To Be A Hamburger |
| Award-winning animator Bill Plympton pits idyllic farm living against modern farming realities in this hilariously provocative tale of a cow seduced by advertising. |
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