Belo Horizonte International Short Film Festival 2012
Bericht von Mumin Baris (NASNAMEYEK HESIN)
First of all, I can say that being in Brazil with my film was very surreal for me. I couldn’t get used to the atmosphere for a while. It was my dream to be going to Brazil with a film even before I had the idea to shoot my film “Nasnameyek Hesin”. Thanks to German Films, my dream came true.
My film, Nasnameyek Hesin was selected for the ‘Movies from the World Section’ of the festival and it was competing for the audience prize. It had three screening during the festival which lasted for 9 days. I have been able to attend two of the screenings; one in the big cinema, the other one a bit smaller. Especially the screening in the bigger cinema was great with a lot of people and very nice responses. The audience was mainly impressed with the authenticity of the film and the sadness of the conditions the actors are living. So the most common question was to ask whether that is a real life story. There were also many positive comments on the acting and the camerawork which made me very happy.
On the organizational level, the festival worked completely perfect. I stayed in the most famous hotel of Belo Horizonte which is only 5 minutes-walk from the cinema, all the nice restaurants (the festival gave a lunch and dinner voucher to let us eat in many of them for free) and bars. I shared my hotel room with an actor from Sao Paolo who was a very nice guy, tried to help me to deal with the language barrier in the city. In Brazil, there are not really many people speaking English (I think Belo Horizonte was one of the good ones).
In the festival, unfortunately there weren’t many international filmmakers/producers. I have met with some of them but I guess we weren’t more than 10. I had the chance to watch a great film shot in Mongolia by an Icelandic director, Gill Taws and there was also Q&A after the screening. It was a pleasure to be able to watch his beautiful poetic film, Soner Ar Glav. In Brazilian films screening, there were always much more people comparing to international films because the audience has the chance to meet with the filmmakers also. My favorite Brazilian film was Epifanio from Glaucia Barbosa which also got the best short film award. Fim de Férias by Camille Entratice was another great one. In the Movies from the World section which also includes my film, there were so many great ones such as Otra Noche En La Tierra by David Munoz and Chambres Avec Vue by Léo Zarka-Lepage.
At the end of the festival, around 8 films got some prize but from the winners, there were only 2 people. The main problem was that the festival hosts every guest around 4 days but the festival is 9 days long which means many people had to leave Belo Horizonte before the ceremony. Another problem of the festival was that the networking with producers was very much limited. Theus Zwakhals from Film Festival Rotterdam and Calmin Borel from Clermont-Ferrand Short Film Festival were the two of them that I could meet and chat for a while which was very nice. Unfortunately, there were no master classes/ seminars at all during the festival.
To finalize, I really enjoyed being in Belo Horizonte Film Festival. It has some problems but the people are enthusiastic about it so I believe next years it has a great potential to fix all the problems about the festival. Thanks a lot to German Films for giving me that chance. It was definitely one of the biggest adventures and experiences of my life. I definitely recommend everyone to go and see Belo Horizonte if they ever have the chance to. It is not very professional festival with so many “big” producers around but a beautiful and well prepared festival with so many nice people around.
http://www.festcurtasbh.com.br