Independent Shorts Awards

Salamat From Germany

Desperate to escape Lebanon and settle in Europe, Lillo buys himself a Syrian passport and is ready to appropriate the Syrian identity to obtain asylum. However, what he might not be ready for yet, is everything that comes along with being a Syrian refugee today.
Directed by Rami Kodeih and Una Gunjak (France)

El Gran Libano

When hungover Bassem wakes up by the lake shore among his dead fishes, his sister Youmna, who he hasn’t seen for 12 years, is there, with a coffin.
Directed by Mounia AKL and Neto Villalobos (Lebanon)

Grave Endangerment

When Adan Rodriguez learns from his dying father that his family has been plagued by a curse for centuries, he vows to end the misfortune. When he promises to guard an ancestral burial ground, supernatural forces challenge him to confront the world of the undead where no one is resting in peace.
Directed by Jax Price (USA)

Karaoke

Failed musician Vanessa comes home from her stale office job one evening to find a version of herself already inside her own house, and is unable to escape.
Directed by Simon Richards (UK)

The Eve

Simon is an eight-year-old boy who seems to have everything from life. He’s a handsome child, he’s rich yet unhappy. He senses that there’s something wrong with his life and this leads him to wander off thanks to his fervid imagination. His greatest wish is to leave the materialistic world behind since he isn’t fond of it. That’s why the only present he wants for Christmas is for Santa Claus to take him away to live in his fairyland toy factory. At the same time, a secret that his family has been keeping for a long time suddenly comes to the surface and it is feared that the worst might happen soon. The expectation for the stroke of midnight on the night before Christmas is transformed into reality for everyone on the eve of something truly different. Something terrible that might happen.
Directed by Luca Machnich (Italy)

The Way Home

Michele is a sardinian kid, fatherless, exuberant and rebel. One morning he skips school and reaches a coastal town, apparently deserted. He wanders through the streets of the city, has an accident, gets scared and goes back home. He asks his mother for help, but she ignores him. He runs away, and roams lonely and abandoned, as a stray dog, through ruins and wild paths, pushing himself further and further away from the sea. Exhausted, he descends a gorge carved in red rock, at the end of which he commits a violence that will change him forever.
Directed by Federico Olivetti (Italy)

Nasty Water!

Two firefighters are trying to extinguish a burning house but face a modern problem.
Directed by Mike Fuhrmann (Switzerland)