Synopsis: When a young telemarketer is confronted by a mysterious talking ostrich, he learns that the universe is stop-motion animation. He must put aside his dwindling toaster sales and focus on convincing his colleagues of his terrifying discovery.

Director’s Biography: Lachlan is a writer, director, and animator from Brisbane, Australia. He enjoys the craft and storytelling possibilities of stop-motion animation. His meta-comedy short titled, AN OSTRICH TOLD ME THE WORLD IS FAKE AND I THINK I BELIEVE IT, was produced as part of his studies at Griffith Film School towards the completion of a Doctor of Visual Arts degree. Lachlan describes the film as a bridge between the world of the animator and the world of the animation; a sentiment explored time and again throughout animation history like in CHUCK JONES’S DUCK AMUCK (1953). In Lachlan’s words, “I envisioned a stop motion film where it felt like you’re watching it over the animator’s shoulder, like one very long well-orchestrated time-lapse. This is done by showing the film through an external camera monitor leaving glimpses of the making-of around its exterior.”

Synopsis: In 1917, two ships collided in Halifax Harbour, causing the largest accidental explosion in history. Among the tragic stories of the disaster is the remarkable account of a sailor who, blown skyward from the docks, flew a distance of two kilometers before landing uphill, naked and unharmed. The Flying Sailor is a contemplation of his journey.

Directors’ Biographies: Wendy Tilby’s first film, STRINGS (1991), won many international awards, in addition to being nominated for an Academy Award®.

Amanda Forbis joined the National Film Board of Canada in 1990 as Animation Director on an educational film titled THE RELUCTANT DECKHAND.

For their next film, Wendy joined forces with Amanda Forbis to direct WHEN THE DAY BREAKS (1999), which received the Short Film Palme d’Or at Cannes, an Academy Award® nomination, and the Grand Prix at the Annecy, Zagreb, and Hiroshima international animation festivals. In 2011, they followed up with WILD LIFE, which garnered a number of prizes and was also nominated for an Academy Award®.

The duo recently completed their third NFB short, THE FLYING SAILOR (2022).

Synopsis: Every day, a father and his son jump with a parachute from their vertiginous cold house, attached to a cliff, to go to the village on the ground, far away where they sell the ice they produce daily.

Director’s Biography: João Gonzalez (1996) is a Portuguese film director, animator, illustrator, and musician with classical training in piano. Recipient of a scholarship from the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, he did a Masters at the Royal College of Art (UK), after finishing his BA at ESMAD (PT). In these institutions, he made 2 multi-award-winning films, NESTOR and THE VOYAGER. In 2022 he became the first Portuguese animation filmmaker to be awarded at Festival de Cannes, winning the Jury Prize for Best Short Film in competition at the Critics Week, with ICE MERCHANTS, which also became the first-ever Portuguese film to be nominated for an Oscar®. He has a big interest in combining his musical background with his practice in authorial animation, always taking the role of composer and sometimes instrumentalist in the films he directs, occasionally setting them to a live performance.

Synopsis: The Boy, the Mole, the Fox, and the Horse is a story of kindness, courage, and hope in traditional hand-drawn animation, following the unlikely friendship of the title characters as they journey together, in the boy’s search for home… Based on the book of the same name.

Directors’ Biographies: Charlie Mackesy began his career as a cartoonist for The Spectator, before becoming a book illustrator for Oxford University Press. His award-winning work has featured in books, private collections, galleries, and public spaces around the world. His internationally bestselling book, THE BOY, THE MOLE, THE FOX AND THE HORSE, was published in October 2019 and holds the record for the most consecutive weeks in the Sunday Times Non-Fiction Chart across all formats as well as being the longest-running Sunday Times Non-Fiction Number One of all time. A number one New York Times best-seller, it is one of eight books since 2013 that has remained on the number one New York Times Bestseller and on the New York Times Advice, Misc. Best Seller list. Charlie’s beloved book is the first-ever book to be awarded both the Waterstones Book of the Year and Barnes and Noble Book of the Year (2019) and has been translated into over 40 different languages and dialects. Charlie’s words and illustrations have brought comfort to many and have been shared online around the world as well as on t-shirts for Comic Relief, magazine covers, street lamp posts, school classrooms, cafés, women’s safe houses, prisons, hospital wards and as NHS hospital computer screensavers. Charlie worked with Richard Curtis on the set of LOVE ACTUALLY to create a set of drawings to be auctioned for Comic Relief, and with Nelson Mandela on a lithograph project, The Unity Series. Charlie’s paintings have been exhibited widely, most recently in Sotheby’s in London. His bronzes can be found in public spaces in London, including Highgate Cemetery and the Brompton Road. Away from art, Charlie co-runs Mama Buci, a honey social enterprise in Zambia that helps families of low and no income become beekeepers. He lives between Brixton and Suffolk with his dog Barney.

Peter Baynton is an award-winning director of animated films. He has been obsessed with drawing pictures that tell stories since he was a kid. After a brief foray into architecture, where he learned his buildings would be neither safe nor tasteful, he decided to learn the craft of character animation instead, studying at Central St Martin’s in London. His first film after graduating, OVER THE HILL, won The McLaren Award for Best British Animation, and he was selected by Screen International as a UK Star of Tomorrow. He has been directing animated shorts, music promos, and commercials for 14 years, and has picked up over 30 awards at film festivals around the world along the way, including an Annecy Crystal in 2013 and a couple of British Animation Awards. After years of making shorts and commercials, in 2015 he decided to follow his heart and pursue longer-form animation, working as a storyboard artist on the BAFTA-winning CBeebies show SARAH & DUCK, and then as 2D Animation Director for PADDINGTON 2. In 2019 he was Animation Director for C4’s Emmy award-winning THE TIGER WHO CAME TO TEA. In 2020 he started working on a film of Charlie Mackesy’s beloved book THE BOY, THE MOLE, THE FOX, AND THE HORSE with NoneMore Productions, and directing this film with Charlie has been the greatest privilege of his professional life. He is now in the early stages of directing a feature film for Lupus Films Ltd, to be released in 2024.

Synopsis: Ivalu is gone. Her little sister is desperate to find her. Her father does not care. The vast Greenlandic nature holds secrets. Where is Ivalu? a question of life, death, and karaoke.

Director’s Biography: Anders Walter is a Danish Academy Award® winning director and screenwriter. For many years he worked as an illustrator for comic books and storyboards for films and commercials. In 2017 his first US feature, I KILL GIANTS premiered at the Toronto Film Festival. Prior to his feature debut, he directed four short films, with HELIUM winning the Academy Award® for best ‘Live Action Short’ in 2014. 9 METER, another short film by Walter also got recognized by the Academy Awards® by being shortlisted in the same category in 2013. He is currently in production on a Danish WW2 feature.

Synopsis: It is a cold night in December. As Ebba waits for the tram, an unexpected turn of events transforms the ride home into something she was not expecting.

Director’s Biography: Eirik worked as an actor before he made his debut as a stage writer with THE CACTUS in 1997. In 2010 he wrote and directed the acclaimed short film FRIENDLY PEOPLE. Since then, he has written and directed 14 short films. His work includes different genres and stretches from high realism to stylized comedy. His latest film, NIGHT RIDE won Best Short Film at the Tribeca Film Festival 2022 and has been well received at festivals worldwide. NIGHT RIDE has a total of 9 wins thus far. Eirik is currently in pre-production with his next short film, CAMPING IN PARADISE.

Synopsis: From writer and director, Alice Rohrwacher, and Academy Award® winning producer, Alfonso Cuarón, LE PUPILLE is a tale of innocence, greed, and fantasy. This live-action short is about desires, pure and selfish, about freedom and devotion, and about the anarchy that is capable of flowering in the minds of girls within the confines of a strict religious boarding school at Christmas.

Director’s Biography: Alice Rohrwacher was born in Fiesole, in the Tuscany region. She graduated with a degree in classic literature from Torino University, wrote for theater, and worked as a musician before approaching filmmaking, initially as a documentary editor. Her first feature, CORPO CELESTE, premiered at the Cannes Film Festival’s Directors’ Fortnight in 2011 and was then selected for Sundance and several more festivals around the world. Rohrwacher’s second feature, THE WONDERS, won the Grand Jury Prize at the 2014 Cannes Film Festival. In 2015, she directed DE DJESS, a short film commissioned by Prada as part of Miu Miu’s Women’s Tales film series that premiered during New York Fashion Week and was also presented at the Venice Film Festival. In 2016, she directed her first opera, a new version of LA TRAVIATA for Teatri di Reggio Emilia. HAPPY AS LAZZARO, her third feature film, won the Best Screenplay Award at the 2018 Cannes Film Festival. She is now working on her fourth feature, THE CHIMERA, with Josh O’Connor, Isabella Rossellini, and Alba Rorhwacher.

Synopsis: An Iranian girl decides to remove her Headscarf/Hijab in a life-changing situation.

Director’s Biography: Cyrus Neshvad is an Iranian film director based in Luxembourg.
His previous short movies SON and PORTRAITIST won both the Luxembourgish Oscars in 2018 and 2021.

Synopsis: For 17 years, filmmaker Jay Rosenblatt filmed his daughter Ella on her birthday in the same spot, asking the same questions. What results is a unique chance to watch time, to see a young woman come into focus physically, mentally, and emotionally.

Director’s Biography: Jay Rosenblatt is an internationally recognized artist and an Academy Award® nominated filmmaker who has completed over thirty films. His work explores our emotional and psychological cores. They are personal in their content yet universal in their appeal.
Jay’s films have received over 100 awards and have been screened throughout the world. A selection of his films had theatrical runs at the Film Forum in New York and at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. He is currently the Program Director of the Jewish Film Institute (presenters of the San Francisco Jewish Film Festival).

Synopsis: After 25 years of service, a US Marine filled with hatred for Muslims plots to bomb an Indiana mosque. When he comes face to face with the immigrants he seeks to kill, the story takes a shocking twist toward compassion, grace, and forgiveness.

Director’s Biography: Joshua Seftel is known for directing the Emmy-winning landmark series QUEER EYE FOR THE STRAIGHT GUY, the feature film WAR, INC. starring John Cusack, Marisa Tomei, and Ben Kingsley, and his regular appearances on CBS Sunday Morning where he interviews his 86-year-old mother. STRANGER AT THE GATE is the latest film in Seftel’s Emmy and Peabody-nominated SECRET LIFE OF MUSLIMS PROJECT (SXSW), which combats Islamophobia with filmmaking. Seftel, who experienced antisemitism as a child, has been committed to working on this subject matter for the past seven years. His other award-winning films include IT’S THE HARD KNOCK LIFE (PBS), ENNIS’ GIFT (HBO), THE HOME TEAM (SXSW), and THE MANY SAD FATES OF MR. TOLEDANO (NYT Op-Docs, Tribeca). He is also a contributor to the Peabody Award-winning podcast THIS AMERICAN LIFE and THE NEW YORK TIMES.

Synopsis: THE ELEPHANT WHISPERERS follows an indigenous couple as they fall in love with Raghu, an orphaned elephant given into their care, and tirelessly work to ensure his recovery and survival.

Director’s Biography: Kartiki Gonsalves is an Indian Natural History, Social Documentary photo-journalist, and filmmaker currently based out of the Nilgiris and Bombay in India. Her work has two foci. One is the environment, nature, and wildlife, where she seeks to raise awareness about the marvelous diversity of nature and wildlife and the importance of conservation. The other is cultures, communities, and their connections.