The 36th Festival and 29th Market of this year’s International Short Film Festival in Clermont-Ferrand will take place from the 31st January to the 8th February. It has been described as ‘the Cannes of short film.’
Sixty six Irish short films were submitted for competition in this year’s festival. Eoin Duffy’s animation ‘The Missing Scarf’ was nominated in the Lab competition while ‘Ghost Train’, a horror directed by Lee Cronin, was selected for the International competition.
“I was truly delighted and surprised when I got the news that Ghost Train was selected for the International Competition,” said Cronin. “For myself, and producers John Keville and Ulla Simonen, Clermont-Ferrand was our number one target for the film's premiere outside of Ireland. It's also a great honour to have the film show in such a competitive selection and a huge relief to know that it will play to some big international audiences. It's also really nice to deliver positive festival news to The Irish Film Board and The Finnish Film Foundation who were really supportive funders.”
Lee Cronin described the plot of his film: “Ghost Train is about the decisions we make as kids and how they can shape the rest of our lives. Despite its strong horror tones, it has a human story at the centre which I think people can identify with, or at least thus far people that have seen the film have identified with it. I also think there is always room in every film festival programme for a film that plays on the fantastical side of cinema! It's a dark film, but hopefully entertaining too.”
He has attended the Clermont-Ferrand Film Festival before and stated that “it's a really exciting festival. There are lots of filmmakers and craftspeople from around the world so it will be great to meet with some random folk from all four corners and to see their work too. It's always a good motivator to see other filmmakers putting you to shame.”
Sadhbh Murphy and Derry O’ Brien from Network Ireland Television will also be in attendance. They will be meeting both NITV’s key international TV buyers and short film festival programme directors, all of whom attend the prominent short film market.
Managing Director Derry O’Brien commented: “We at NITV consider that this festival and market is the most important one with regard to our short film catalogue, which is why we have always attended it. Over three days we get to meet all our key overseas broadcast clients from the US, Europe, Japan and Australia and introduce them to our latest compilation of short films. We have 12 new short film titles in our “Risky Business Collection” that we are promoting to these buyers, both with streaming links and DVD packages. This market is where we initiate most of our short film business each year.
“We also get to meet our festival programmer contacts and update them on the various new titles, most of which are multi award winning shorts, which they might want to consider selecting.
“Finally, through meeting with both producers, funding agencies like the New Zealand Film Commission, Creative Scotland and the BFI, as well as attendance at the Video Library, we are looking to judiciously acquire new high quality shorts for our catalogue.”
Mick Hannigan and Una Feely of IndieCork Film Festival will also be present at Clermont-Ferrand. Their Cork-based festival celebrates independent film and music. IndieCork is the ‘Irish Desk’ for the European co-production forum of Clermont-Ferrand where one filmmaker from each of the EU countries is invited to pitch for funding and seek European partners for their short film projects.
IndieCork nominated filmmaker Oonagh Kearney, who is from Cork and currently resides in London as the Irish representative in the Euro-Connection Forum. Oonagh will be pitching her new project ‘Foul Play’, a short dance film which follows her previous creative dance film ‘The Wake’, on the 4th of February.
Mick Hannigan of IndieCork said: “Clermont-Ferrand is the Cannes of short film, and Euro-Connection is a wonderful opportunity for an emerging talent to realize the possibility of making their next film. We believe that Oonagh Kearney is a rising star, making imaginative and engaging films. We admire her work greatly and wish Oonagh every success at Euro-Connection.”
Lee Cronin is currently working on his debut feature film which is also a horror-fantasy. The trailer for 'Ghost Train' can be found here.
For more information about the 36th Festival/ 29th Market of the Clermont-Ferrand International Short Film Festival, see here.
