A jury headed by director Jane Campion has chosen a student film from Chicago as the best of this year’s Cinefondation competition at the Cannes Film Festival.
“Needle,” a short film made by Anahita Ghazvinizadeh at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, was awarded the 15,000-Euro first prize, which also comes with a guarantee that the winning filmmaker’s first feature will be shown at Cannes.
“En Attendant Le Degel,” directed by Sarah Hirtt from INSAS in Belgium, won the 11,250-Euro second prize, while the 7,500-Euro third-place award went in a tie to “In Acvariu” (“In the Fishbowl”) from Tudor Cristian Jurgiu from UNATC in Romania, and “Pandy” (“Pandas”) from Marus Vizar from FAMU in the Czech Republic.
The Cinefondation competition consisted of 18 student films chosen from nearly 1,550 entries. In addition to Campion, the Cinefondation and Short Films Jury consisted of Maji-da Abdi, Nicolette Braschi, Nandita Das and Semih Kaplanoglu.
