What was the starting point of Bergie? 
There were three elements that lead to Bergie’s conception. I live in Cape Town where it is a very common sight to see people sleeping on sidewalks. I heard a story about a person that was homeless who died, but people thought he was sleeping. I wondered for a long time how long it took for people to realise that the person lying there was actually dead. Secondly, there are a lot of homeless people close to my apartment. I sometimes see how law enforcement wake them up and remove them, while other times there are activists who try to block their removal by serving court papers. The scenes taking place behind our apartment block are usually quite dramatic. The third element that triggered Bergie was that, in the same area, there is a 5km fun-run every Saturday morning. Just after the start of the race, we would pass underneath a bridge where a lot of homeless people would be sleeping and, in the process, our running and stomping would wake them up. While running one of the races, these three elements clicked together as I thought that one of the ways in which you would realise a homeless person has died, is, unfortunately, when he or she is in your way. And usually, law enforcement deals with such a situation, not us. I therefore wrote the script with this location in mind, close to my apartment, where these different events were taking place. 

Can you explain what the word “bergie” means, in South Africa? 
The term “bergie” is a South Africanism that refers to people that are homeless, since they usually sought refuge on the slopes of Table Mountain (called “Tafelberg” in Afrikaans). As in Dutch and German, the word for “mountain” in Afrikaans is berg. With the “-ie” at the end, the word becomes a diminutive. 

Most of the shots are focused on the main character’s face and reactions. Did you shoot your film that way to enable the viewer to really invest themselves emotionally? 
Yes definitely, but another reason is to cut the rest of the world out. The camera not only captures what’s in front of it, but also eliminates the world around it. And that is important, because, in a similar way, there is a lot of information in real life that we do not have access to. I think this is a more honest way of storytelling, because it reflects our individual and limited experience of the world. I therefore not only wanted the audience to witness the main character’s reaction to the situation, but also to encourage the audience to use their imagination with regards to the off-screen space and, as a result, take part in the film’s meaning-making process. 

How do you hope audiences will react to the film?
I hope audiences will be encouraged to think about their own relation towards people that suffer and what such a responsibility might entail.

What is your favourite short film?
It’s a tie between Qiu Yang’s A Gentle Night and Sameh Alaa I Am Afraid to Forget Your Face. Charlotte Wells’s Laps is a close second.

What does the Festival mean to you? 
For me, Clermont-Ferrand represents a celebration of the short film format. While a lot of people see short films as stepping stones to features, I think it is a medium or format in its own right and, in many ways, can be more flexible and daring than features. The possibilities of pushing the short film format are endless. 

Bergie is being shown as part of the International Competition I5.  

The film is a very moving account of a father’s struggle. What inspired you to tell his story?
This film is inspired by my own childhood when my dad was a journalist and he was imprisoned for two years.

How did you cast the film? And how did you work with the actors to re-create these subtle family dynamics?    
In this film, the female character has to work and be active, I chose an actress who is also a very capable actor and famous in Iran, she is naturally full of energy, in contrast to the male character who had been in prison for a few years, he should have been less energetic with a hard face, I had seen this actor in the movie A Man of Integrity, directed by Mohammad Rasoulof, who was present at the Cannes Film Festival. To find a child actress, I auditioned a lot of child actors until I got to this little girl who had acted in TV commercial teaser. I really liked her face and she was very smart. I went to her house to play games, and between games, I would practice the movie sequences. Children should think that everything is really just a game. We had training sessions with male and female actors, but the child only practiced with the female actor and did not meet the male actor until shooting time, because I wanted them to be strangers to each other.

What’s your background as a filmmaker? What sorts of stories do you like telling?
I have two documentary films, one of which is called Finding Farideh that was the representative of Iranian cinema at the Oscars 2020. And I have four short fiction films and my previous film called The Visit was also in the Clermont festival and this will be my second time at this festival. I am interested in stories that are inspired by real society. Especially stories that are self-portraits.

What are your cinematic inspirations?
The Dardenne brothers and Abbas Kiarostami’s films.

What do you hope to work on next?
I have a short story script inspired by the recent events in Iran which is not unrelated to my previous works.

What’s your favourite short?
The first short films that attracted me were Krzysztof Kieślowski’s short films.

What does the Festival mean to you? 
Generally in my opinion, the artistic community in the world has no borders and forms a big family  and festivals are very useful  for gathering these  family members for cultural  exchange. I hope to find good connections here to produce the next film.

48 Hours is being shown as part of the International Competition I5. 

Can you tell us about Daphne, the main character, and what led you to write her story?
Daphne is a single mum. She has hardly any communication with her socially awkward son, who has been consumed by technology, and she is struggling with that. She works from home due to the pandemic restrictive measures, so she has no other human interaction. She is lonely and due to the curfew and the lockdown she cannot go out to meet people. So she signs up on a dating app. My own need for artistic expression after being locked inside the house for so long as well as my desire for human contact, love and affection during the lockdowns, prompted me to write this story, while simultaneously aiming to portray the survival instinct of human nature.

The film is set during lockdown. Why was it important to put your character in this particular context?
Daphne’s desperate desire for love and affection is what the film is all about. It was important that my character was positioned in the context of the pandemic and the lockdowns as her desire became more intense during this period, and consequently loneliness kicked in. And loneliness is what really made her so desperate for human contact.

What were the challenges you have encountered while making Daphne? 
As Daphne was shot with a minimum budget (10K), because we had no state funding in place, it was a challenge. I had written the film during lockdown and wanted to make it as soon as possible, as I felt desperate myself to be creative. I have many colleagues and friends in the industry who were willing to help me bring this project to life. It took me a few months, but I finally managed to put a team together and we shot the film in three days after the third lockdown. Budget restrictions are always a problem, but with the help of this incredible team we managed to make the film.

Daphne is a raw and realistic portrait of how people seek for affection in the modern age. Why is it important for you to explore this in a film? 
Affection is something that we are missing nowadays. We are so preoccupied with work and material things that we keep forgetting how to communicate with people and show our true feelings. It was important for me in the film to expose the strong need for affection which goes beyond the bodily connection. I wanted to underline people’s unfulfilled emotional needs in the modern age and the testing of human limits; how during moments where people are tested emotionally and physically, unprecedented behaviours might be manifested in an uncontrolled and surprising manner.

What’s your favourite short film?
Wasp by Andrea Arnold is one of my favourite shorts. It is a beautifully crafted film, in all aspects, about a struggling single mother who is determined not to let her four young children be an obstacle in the pursuit of dating with an old acquaintance. It is the kind of cinema that I love.

What does the Festival mean to you?
Clermont-Ferrand Short Film Festival is the biggest and most important film festival dedicated to short films. It represents success and recognition for any filmmaker to have their film selected by the festival out of 8K plus submissions. We are honoured!

Daphne is being shown as part of the International Competition I5. 

What is your particular relationship with Chemnitz? 
I was born in Dresden, a city right next to Chemnitz. When I was passing through Chemnitz by train in my early 20s, I realised that I had never been to the city before, even though it was so close to my hometown. Then I fell in love with a person who grew up in Chemnitz. All of a sudden I spent a lot of time in a city that seemed completely uninteresting to me before. That in particular was a very exciting condition, because I was allowed to dive deep into the existing communities. I was fascinated by the discovery that this city, which is hardly noticed from the outside, actually is in a very interesting, restless and vibrant state from the inside. 

What drove you to make a documentary about its youth? Why choose to tell its story this way? 
I immediately felt very comfortable meeting all the people in the city. There was a lot of chaos in young people’s emotional lives and their dreams for the future. Their longings were hopeful and desperate at the same time. It really impressed me how big their dreams seemed to be and how many things seemed to hold them back at the same time. Obstacles that have to do with their families, past and history of the city. I decided to make a film about these people’s relationship with their hometown. So the city became the protagonist. 

How did you approach the young people that feature in the film? Were they keen to get involved?  
The people were mostly very enthusiastic, many are proud of their city. Also, I think Chemnitz is a place that is not oversaturated in terms of art and culture. These places often have great potential. 

Tell us about the shooting process. Was it smooth? What obstacles did you encounter? 
The shooting was very exhausting because there were only two of us on location. Philipp Schaeffer as DoP and me as director. In addition, I recorded the entire original sound and had to make contact with an unusually large number of protagonists, maintain contact and keep track of situations. Philipp had to keep control of a rather large camera set-up on his own and I’m still very thankful to Philipp for being so loyal and supportive. He did such a fantastic job and was a good companion. All in all this way of working was a very interesting experience for me because it allowed for very flexible and intimate shooting. 

Tell us more about your background as a filmmaker. Are you also keen to explore fiction? 
I was born in Dresden in 1995. My mother grew up in Soviet-occupied Lithuania, my father in West Germany. So I grew up in a very contrasting home in the east of the newly reunified Germany. For a long time I thought that none of this mattered to me. That changed when I began my directing studies in Germany 3 years ago. I started to feel a strong curiosity to get more involved with the places where I grew up and also with my maternal homeland, Lithuania. I realized that this part had shaped me more than I thought. I have spent most of my life in East Germany, but also in Lithuania and I do speak both languages. Nevertheless, I never used to see myself as an East child because of my West German father. Right now, it’s very exciting for me to deal with this in my film work. Actually, my most recent project is a fiction short film titled In the Rough. It’s based on an autobiographical experience from my childhood days in Lithuania. In the Rough was made as part of my studies at the Filmakademie Baden-Württemberg in co-production with the television broadcasters ARTE and SWR. The film is currently in the final stages of post-production and we are now starting to submit it to festivals. Right now I’m very open about whether I want to do documentary or fiction, I would always go with what the subject has to offer. 

What films have inspired you in your work more generally?   
Ida and Cold War by Pawel Pawlikowski made a big impression on me. 

What’s your favourite short?  
I have thought about it for a long time, but can’t decide. There are a few.  

What does the Festival mean to you?  
It is a dream of mine to participate in the Clermont-Ferrand ISFF, which has now come true. My heart beats faster half the day when I received the news. For me it is the first time to participate in a French festival and I am very excited about it, because I know about the importance of film and cinema in France and also about the long tradition of Clermont-Ferrand. For the film Chemkids, Clermont-Ferrand will also be the most Western European screening so far. So I am even more excited to present the film there and to get into an interaction with other filmmakers. 

Chemkids is being shown as part of the International Competition I5.  

How was the film born?
I’ve always been fascinated by the fact that humans seem to adapt so quickly to extreme situations. Even a huge disaster like a war cannot stop people from having dinner with their friends in the ruins and argue about the bill afterwards. Normality seems to be a powerful force.

What gave you the idea of setting this couple crisis in the midst of a zombie invasion?
A zombie apocalypse is obviously a disaster, but it also has some humour in it. A horde of zombies is very dangerous, but I could easily imagine that a single zombie would become more of nuisance after a while. Most zombie stories focus on the disaster. The quiet suburbia where polite neighbours suddenly start killing each other. But what happens afterwards? When do you have enough food to start getting annoyed by how loudly people chew it again?

Was it hard to find the right balance between the bloody, absurd tone of the film and the interpretation of the marriage crisis the characters experience?
The intention was to treat the zombies as anti-dramatic as possible. The drama lies between the characters and not between the characters and the zombies. The more everyday and normal we would treat the zombies the funnier and more absurd the film will turn out.

What directions did you give to the two main actors?
When the cast is spot on it becomes very easy to be a director. Our main direction was to keep it normal and everyday. Low key and subtle. Zombies outside the door is like flies on the window – nothing special but irritating.

How did you and the set decoration crew come to create this decor for the film? Are there any specific films that inspired this decor?
The location is a summer cottage outside Stockholm. We didn’t change much. We added some details and the fence of course but in general everything was there from the beginning. That´s why we liked it so much. It felt like a typical Swedish summer house easy to identify with.

Is there a particular short film that has made a strong impression on you?
The Neighbors’ Window is about anonymous glimpses into other people’s lives and how it affects our feelings about the world and about ourselves. The film can be seen as an allegory about social media – the way we see into each other’s lives and take away an idealized view that never really tells the whole story.

What’s your definition of a good film?
You have to be moved by it in some way. And be able to relate to the characters and the story. Going to the cinema can be compared to going to the church. When leaving the cinema, you feel different in some way. If you’ve seen a good film your life feels richer, larger and maybe the film has given some answers to your everyday problems. Maybe you are able to take decisions that might change the rest of your life or maybe you just feel bit more light-hearted.

Det Sista Äktenskapet [The Last Marriage] is being shown as part of International Competition I5.

Interview with Morad Mostafa, director of Khadiga

Is Khadiga based on someone you know? What motivated you to tell her story? 
Khadiga is a character we all know, and she exists in all societies in different forms and ways. What prompted me to tell this story is that it is a story that I’d like to tell because it affects me very much and it remained inside my head for years until I decided to be brave and bring it to light because it is a very sensitive story, we are always afraid to speak about, and I was also encouraged because it continues what I started earlier. I see that in my three films. There is a common shocking thing, and this shock kept escalating with me from one film to another, even if the most shocking of them was Khadiga. This originates from the idea of the film itself and the transient event that explodes in the middle of the film. Khadiga is about the journey of a young girl on a very ordinary day, or it seems so, but under the surface lies the volcano. Khadiga, accompanied by her infant child, makes some visits and moves from one place to another amid the noise and crowds of Cairo streets and the social pressure she feels. This event happens and defies all possible interpretations of logic it is an act that simulates feelings more than it simulates the mind. But this was a special challenge for me, how to make a film that is so cruel and shocking and at the same time carries a great deal of humanity and feelings. I always used to watch real people like Khadija on TV or in the newspapers being subjected to such an act that I previously described as defying interpretation, and therefore their maternal reaction to this event was always late, as if they were in another time and place when this happened and they wake up from that shock in hindsight, the volcano can remain molten for years and eventually must erupt due to pressure.

How did you cast the actress who plays her?  
I always prefer to work with non-actors, because they are real, they are not trained to a certain method of acting, so their feelings are truer and closer to reality and they speak like their real selves and in a spontaneous way, with focusing on some common feelings between them and the characters of the film because I actually work without scenarios, so I prefer to tell the film so they can understand it more than memorizing it.Malak, the girl who plays Khadija, is not an actress nor has previous experiences, and she was very attractive when I first saw her in the casting; with her eyes that carry so many troubled feelings. She resembles the character very much, she even lives in the same place where I’m telling the story, and when we started the rehearsals which took about two months, I told her about the film and she was greatly affected by it, and I was surprised in front of a camera with her spontaneity and calmness.

How was the shooting process like in the streets of Cairo?
Filming in the streets of Cairo is always difficult and tiring, but it is very interesting for me because it transports you to the current time and place in which you tell your story and creates credibility in expressing the event and documenting the place. Khadiga belongs to the genre of “road movie or city film” and the hustle and bustle of the city helps to increase the pressure factors on the character. Filming in the streets was good and natural and we did not encounter any problems because I was moving in the streets with a small camera and an unpopular girl was carrying a child on her shoulder. This does not draw the attention of passers-by because they prefer star scenes only. On the other hand, I would like to thank the people of the Imbāba area where the film was filmed entirely.

Your last film was also focused on female characters and their distinctive experiences. Can you tell us more about that? What subjects do you like to explore as a filmmaker? 
Female characters were always inspiring to me, as I am an only child who has lived with his mother from childhood until recently, and I always heard stories from her about women and viewed the world through her eyes. And this had a great impact on me. Even my first film, Hennet Ward was about a real experience I lived with my mother in a Henna party. I am always interested in topics related to the Egyptian society in recent times, what the simple people suffer from, the social pressure imposed on them, the relations of individuals with each other, their relationship inside their society, and the social and cultural change that has happened in the society recently which appeared greatly in the post-revolution phase, where the Egyptian society was characterized by authentic features and closer to stability, and not as violent as it is at the moment; pressured and full of grudge. This is what I try to look for or tell in my stories, and this little by little coalesces with the concerns and dreams of the current people and affects the viewer, regardless of his nationality or gender. I am sure that we will feel it if we watch the three films at once. It is possible that the films express me personally as well as my thoughts and concerns as a man, even if it is through a story whose heroine is a woman, because in my previous and upcoming films the place, the other characters and the circumstances surrounding the events are a hero besides. I initially had three harsh stories through which I try to question and think about this social change of our ideas and our society, including children and men, not only women, and through those stories, three short films were made that I am proud of, and they were all selected in a great festival such as Clermont-Ferrand Festival.

Is there a particular short film that has made a strong impression on you? 
There are many short films that I loved in previous years and left an impression on me like: Skin by Guy Nattiv, Da Yie by Anthony Nti, The Christmas Gift by Bogdan Mureșanu. These films have things in common, have strong feelings, and an interesting way of telling, which I love. From Egypt, I love very much the films of my friend, director Sameh Alaa, because they have the same features and I consider them among my favorite films, I am so glad we are from the same generation.

What’s your definition of a good film?
A film that lingers in the audiences’ mind for a while and makes you think and wonder.

Khadiga is being shown as part of International Competition I5.

Interview with Sam Cutler-Kreutz and David Cutler-Kreutz, co-directors of Flounder

The film deals with masculinity, rituals and loyalty. Can you tell me what inspired you to make it? What real life experiences led you to write about these topics?
We came of age as young men, surrounded by toxic masculinity.  It was pervasive in many facets of our lives, from sports teams and youth groups to classrooms and friendship circles.  We feel estranged from so many of the masculine postures and rites of passage in our current culture and felt that it was a topic we needed to engage with in our filmmaking.

Why is this an important story to tell in today’s society, from a man’s point of view? 
The dangers of a certain type of masculine culture run deep, and if we as men can hold up the mirror to ourselves and other men, we think there is real change to be had.  We live in a world where half the USA essentially shrugged when they heard that one of our candidates for the highest office in the land was engaging in revolting masculine behavior.  We are numb to men behaving in ways that are hugely problematic, and this cannot be the world we live in. It is our job as filmmakers to get our audiences to engage with important cultural issues. 

Did you have a specific audience in mind that you wished to target when writing the script? 
JI think this film is made for a wide variety of audiences, but I hope that it can have an effect on young men who are coming of age and struggling with the situations they find themselves in. 

Is there a particular short film that has made a strong impression on you? 
We adore a short by our good friends Celine and Logan called Caroline.  The intensity and naturalness have always impressed us, as well as incredible acting and editing.  We’ve seen it many times and it still has a bit of magic left for us, each time we watch.

What’s your definition of a good film?  
For this film, we tried as hard as we could to make something you couldn’t take your eyes off of.  I think we’ve succeeded on that front.  Every film needs something different.

Flounder is being shown as part of International Competition I5.