HIGHLIGHTS: January 2025 Toronto FEMALE Film Festival

A showcase of the best short films in the world today!

AUDIENCE AWARDS:

Best Short Film: THE FIRST NIGHT
Best Experimental Film: HORROR NIGHT
Best Documentary Film: EKATERINA – DAYS OF CHANGE
Best Direction: FENCE
Best Micro-Short Film: BEWILDERNESS
Best Story: MASKS OF SANITY

See the Full Lineup of Films:

THE FIRST NIGHT, 21min., Czech Republic
Directed by Silvia Gregorova
A tragicomedy based on the eponymous short story by Luigi Pirandello, which was first published in 1900. While the original story takes place in Sicily, the plot of this film adaptation is set in a contemporary Czech village. Due to various family interests, the young violinist Ani?ka and the widowed, aging gravedigger František are forced into an unwanted marriage by their relatives. We thus follow a story about loneliness, about love beyond the grave, but also about trying not to resent life and learning to move on, even though the loss of our loved ones still hurts.

HORROR NIGHT, 9min., Greece
Directed by Natasha Smyrnaiou
Emily is watching a thriller movie. She is influenced and identifies so much that confused with reality.

https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100092983190074
https://instagram.com/natasha_smyrnaiou

EKATERINA – DAYS OF CHANGE, 30min,. Bulgaria
Directed by Teodora Petrova
The significant and outstanding women in our history are rarely mentioned in textbooks, while their actions are greatly inspiring and deserve to be remembered.

https://www.facebook.com/ekaterina.karavelova.film

FENCE, 13min., Iraq
Directed by Sakar Othman Hassan
A Kurdish survivor of the “Anfal” Genocide returns to his village to rebuild his life, confronting haunting memories of his past.

https://instagram.com/sakar_osman_

BEWILDERNESS, 4min., South Africa
Directed by Nkhensane Mhishi
Bert, a lumberjack, works hard at chopping down the new forest before him. Between chopping down trees, he piles his lumber sky high, disturbs the natural wildlife, and desecrates the clean land with litter and trash. As he gets closer to the forest’s core, he sees a flower that blasts hallucinogenic pollen into his face. Bert loses his bearing on reality and is lured deeper into the forest he sought to destroy through an intense, psychedelic drug trip.


MASKS OF SANITY, 10min., Egypt
Directed by J.S. Wolfe, Juditta Salem
A film that depicts individuals with Cluster B Personality Disorders, how they impact each other, and themselves. The film acts as a space for them to share their inner dialogue.

https://involutionpublishing.com/
https://instagram.com/wolfenovels

TETHER, 7min,. USA
Directed by Kathy O Lofton
A woman athlete is forced to see life differently, after an assault that leads to visual impairment.

http://www.kathyolofton.com/
https://facebook.com/loftonmedia901
https://www.instagram.com/lofton_media

femalefilmfestival's avatar

By femalefilmfestival

The irony of this festival is that its goal is to not be around in 5 years time. To eventually not be relevant because there is zero need to have a festival geared for female talent and female stories because the stories presented in Hollywood and around the world are a balanced showcase of the human experience from both sexes. Our goal is to achieve a lot of success and then fold into oblivion simply because there is no need for this festival. This festival was created by the FEEDBACK Film & Writing Festival as a simple reaction to a strong need to showcase female talent from around the world in a more profound way. When putting together the weekly festival, the administration noticed a lack of a female presence in the stories being shown at the festival. A classic example and analogy to the frustration is how the festival noticed that even the smaller roles in a screenplay were written for a man to play. There was zero reason for this in many stories. How a police officer, or a political campaign manager, for example with 3-4 lines in a screenplay was a "HE" character. Why? And these are the screenplays written by the winners! The talented one who have obtained agents and have began/beginning their careers as a writer.

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