April 2017 Female Directed & Written Stories, Screenplays, and Short Films

May 9, 2017 femalefilmfestival Festival Audience Feedback, Screenplay Table Read, Short Films, Story Readings, Winning Screenplays and Short Films, Screenplays

Submit your Female Story, Screenplay, or Short Film to the Festival today: https://femalefilmfestival.com/

NOSTOMANIA, 2min, Canada, Experimental
WATCH Audience FEEDBACK

IN A WARM DARK PLACE, 10min, USA, Drama/Thriller
WATCH Audience FEEDBACK

THE MAN FROM THE SWIM LANE ASIDE, 15min, Brazil, Drama/Romance
WATCH Audience FEEDBACK

BENDED BONDS, 6min, Belgium, Drama
WATCH Audience FEEDBACK

RIGHT HERE OR OVER THERE, 16min, France, Drama
WATCH Audience FEEDBACK

UNBIND, 5min, Australia, Dance/Experimental
WATCH Audience FEEDBACK

LE BELLE FOLIE, 14min, UK, Comedy
WATCH Audience FEEDBACK

CONFESSION, 5min, USA, Horror/Thriller
WATCH Audience FEEDBACK

THE WHITE ROSE, 5min, USA, Thriller/Film Noir
WATCH Audience FEEDBACK

HAVE A LITTLE FAITH, 12min, USA, Comedy
WATCH Audience FEEDBACK

UNCLE ALBERT, 11min, USA, Dark Comedy
WATCH Audience FEEDBACK

GEORGE, 7min, USA, Documentary
WATCH Audience FEEDBACK

1st SCENE Screenplay – THE DEBT
April 2017 Reading
Written by Michelle Patkowski

NOVEL Transcript Reading – ORIGINS OF EVE
April 2017 Reading
Written by Kimberly Davis

COMEDY BEST Scene Screenplay – FATE’S PECULIAR SENSE OF HUMOR
April 2017 Reading
Written by N. Triton

Get to know the short film: CARGO, 25min, Netherlands, Documentary/Romance

April 29, 2017 femalefilmfestival Director, Festival Audience Feedback, Short Films 25min, audience feedback, CARGO, Documentary/Romance, european short film, Netherlands

Film playing at the Best of EUROPEAN Cinema FEEDBACK Film Festival. Thursday May 18th. 7pm. Downtown Toronto. Get your FREE Tickets

On a lonely ship, in the middle of the North Sea, fourteen men work together for a month. Day and night they sail around oilrigs to provide them of supplies. In this world of fellowship, waves, storms and containers, Frans, an Amsterdam sailor, seems to be at his best. However, the longer the journey lasts, the more it becomes apparent that something essential is missing in this male microcosm at sea. A small film about loneliness and the importance of love.

Marina Meijer – Director’s BIO of the short film CARGO

April 29, 2017April 29, 2017 femalefilmfestival Director, Short Films, Uncategorized audience feedback, Cargo short film, Marina Meijer

Film playing at the Best of EUROPEAN Cinema FEEDBACK Film Festival. Thursday May 18th. 7pm. Downtown Toronto. Get your FREE Tickets

See director BIO

Biography Marina Meijer (1987)
Director
Marina Meijer (1987) studied Political Science and Language&Cultural Studies at the Universities of Amsterdam and Utrecht. Meanwhile she followed photography classes at the International Center of Photography in New York. At this moment she just graduated at the Netherlands Filmacademy, where she studied Directing Documentary.

CARGO, 25min, Netherlands, Documentary/Romance

HIGHLIGHTS & VIDEOS: Los Angeles April 2017 Film Festival

April 25, 2017 femalefilmfestival Festival Audience Feedback, Short Films audience feedback, Los Angeles April 2017 Film Festival

AUDIENCE FESTIVAL AWARDS

Best Film: THE NEON STRUGGLE

Best Performances: UNCLE ALBERT

Best Cinematography: CONFESSION

Best Music: The music from THE NEON STRUGGLE

WATCH THE AUDIENCE FEEDBACK VIDEOS for each film:

CONFESSION, 5min, USA, Horror/Thriller
WATCH Audience FEEDBACK

THE WHITE ROSE, 5min, USA, Thriller/Film Noir
WATCH Audience FEEDBACK

HAVE A LITTLE FAITH, 12min, USA, Comedy
WATCH Audience FEEDBACK

UNCLE ALBERT, 11min, USA, Dark Comedy
WATCH Audience FEEDBACK

GEORGE, 7min, USA, Documentary
WATCH Audience FEEDBACK

THE LONG GOODBYE: AN ALZHEIMER’S STORY, 5min, USA, Documentary
WATCH Audience FEEDBACK

THE NEON STRUGGLE, 38min, USA, Documentary
WATCH Audience FEEDBACK

The LOS ANGELES APRIL 2017 FEEDBACK Film Festival gave our audiences the best of short movies from the United States. The first half was a selection of “Female Directed films”.

The theme of the festival was “END OF THE LINE”.

HIGHLIGHTS & VIDEOS: Toronto April 2017 Film Festival

April 25, 2017April 25, 2017 femalefilmfestival Festival Audience Feedback, Short Films April 2017 Film Festival

AUDIENCE FESTIVAL AWARDS

Best Film: RIGHT HERE OR OVER THERE

Best Performances: THE MAN FROM THE SWIM LANE ASIDE

Best Cinematography: THE MAN FROM THE SWIM LANE ASIDE

Best Music: The music from LE BELLE FOLIE

Watch the Audience FEEDBACK Videos from each film:

NOSTOMANIA, 2min, Canada, Experimental
WATCH Audience FEEDBACK

IN A WARM DARK PLACE, 10min, USA, Drama/Thriller
WATCH Audience FEEDBACK

THE MAN FROM THE SWIM LANE ASIDE, 15min, Brazil, Drama/Romance
WATCH Audience FEEDBACK

BENDED BONDS, 6min, Belgium, Drama
WATCH Audience FEEDBACK

RIGHT HERE OR OVER THERE, 16min, France, Drama
WATCH Audience FEEDBACK

UNBIND, 5min, Australia, Dance/Experimental
WATCH Audience FEEDBACK

LE BELLE FOLIE, 14min, UK, Comedy
WATCH Audience FEEDBACK

The FEMALE APRIL 2017 FEEDBACK Film Festival gave our audiences simply the best of short comedy movies from around the world.

The theme of the festival was “HOW MEMORY SHAPES US”.

Every film showcased was about a setting where a character was forced to go back to their past and rediscover themselves.

NOTE: Our 3rd Female Director’s festival!

The Female FEEDBACK Film Festival has been an incredible learning experience. The success it’s acheived so far in less than a year and three festival nights (2 in Toronto. 1 in Los Angeles) has been nothing short of amazing. The quality of films presented is top notch. The difficult part now is that we need to expand our festival and have more evenings because we have so many great shorts to program.

I really have nothing to do with this festival. I don’t program a single film. I don’t moderate. I don’t program any of the accepted screenplays. My job is to simply make sure the excellent team (lead by Kierston Drier and Amanda Lomonaco) have a cinema and audience to showcase the accepted works.

Kierston Drier’s rise to moderating the night has been amazing. The audience’s response to her is extremely positive and she gets the best out of them each time she performs the role. And yes, moderating is a performance. The #1 goal is to make sure the film get’s it true justice from the audience’s comments.

As our editor John Johnson says: “The less the moderator talks, the better the film festival is.” You want the audience to make the points. You want to audience to express their emotions and opinions on the film. The moderator is there to start and end the conversation and hopefully say nothing in between. And Kierston, so early in the job, is mastering that.

And the amazing succcess of Kierston and Amanda’s programming this festival can’t be overlooked. They are simply picking the right films to bring to this festival and to the entire world.

See you at the festivals in 2017.

– Matthew Toffolo

BENDED BONDS Short Film – Audience Feedback from April 2017 Female Film Festival

April 25, 2017April 25, 2017 femalefilmfestival Festival Audience Feedback, Short Films Audience Feedback from April 2017 Female Film Festival, BENDED BONDS Short Film, Julie Janssens

AUDIENCE FEEDBACK VIDEO:

BENDED BONDS, 6min, Belgium, Drama
Directed by Julie Janssens

Sarah and Jane, two sisters, haven’t spoken to each other for years. The death of their mother forces them to come together to make the arrangements for their legacy. Their painful memories and resentments crawl back to the surface.

Director Statement

The challenge of the movie was to communicate the paradox and complexity of siblings relationships through dialogs, silences and gazes. From an outside perspective, these tensions may seem ridiculously intense and dramatic. Sarah and Jeanne have a hard time understanding each other. They are trying to get away from some patterns transmitted by generational legacy. They claim who they are but they struggle to move through the perception of the family they grew up with.

What particularly concerns me is the unconditional love we share with our siblings. It’s the kind of relationship that allows low blows and induces a duty to reconcile. This relationship is undeniable because it is “the same flesh, the same blood”.

Also reconciliations are special in this love/hate relationship. From what I have observed in my own family, seldom are there proper apologies or truthful excuses. Most of the time, with my sister, we renew contact without obtaining a conflict resolution. Time passes, we forget about it until the next hint that will rekindle the flame. Between siblings we know exactly what to say to each other to piss or hurt each other. These recurrent conflicts become individual scars and/or common ones.

I also wanted to recreate this ambivalence in the title “Bended bonds”:
– ‘bended’ refers to the bended, twisted relationship they developed,
– ‘bonds’ refers to the brotherhood and the fact that they were tied to some things before they met again … but finally freed themselves.

The combination of the two terms expresses the paradox of their relationship. One expression cancels and/or complements the other … Moreover, this ambiguity leaves an open end for the viewer.

This short film was shot from start to finish in 72 hours as part of the Kino Kabaret at the “Off-Courts” Trouville 2016 festival.

This story is a realistic private session with the necessary subtilety to address the complexity of a sister’s relationship with accuracy and sensitivity.

Project Title (Original Language):Deliees a s’en tordre

Film Type:Short, Television

Runtime:6 minutes

Completion Date:September 17, 2016

Country of Origin:Belgium

Country of Filming:France

Film Language:French

Shooting Format:Digital

Film Color:Color

WATCH 2016 FILM FESTIVAL EVENTS and the FEEDBACK VIDEOS of EACH SELECTED FILM

DECEMBER FAMILY/ANIMATION 2016 Film Festival
Watch Audience Feedback Videos from December event

DECEMBER FEMALE Directors Film Festival
Best of the Dec. 22, 2016 Fest.

DECEMBER LA FEEDBACK Film Festival – Day 1
Best of the Dec. 7, 2016 Fest.

HIGHLIGHTS LA FEEDBACK Film Festival – Day 2
Best of the Dec. 8, 2016 Fest.

11 FILMS/11 COUNTRIES NOVEMBER 2016 Film Festival
Watch Audience Feedback Videos from November event

OCTOBER THRILLER/HORROR 2016 Film Festival
Watch Audience Feedback Videos from October event

OCTOBER ACTION/CRIME 2016 Film Festival
Watch Audience Feedback Videos from October event

SEPTEMBER DOC/COMEDY 2016 Film Festival
Watch Audience Feedback Videos from September event

HIGHLIGHTS September 2016 SCI-FI FEEDBACK Film Festival
Best of the Sept. 22, 2016 Fest.

IN A WARM DARK PLACE Short Film – Audience Feedback from April 2017 Female Film Festival

April 25, 2017April 25, 2017 femalefilmfestival Festival Audience Feedback, Short Films Audience Feedback from April 2017 Female Film Festival, IN A WARM DARK PLACE Short Film, Sydney Waltz

AUDIENCE FEEDBACK VIDEO:

IN A WARM DARK PLACE, 10min, USA, Drama/Thriller
Directed by Sydney Waltz

A psychological drama about a mother and her relationship with her newborn son. With the incessant crying of her child and lack of support from her husband, Clarissa is finding that motherhood is not as satisfying as she had hoped. When her newborn son goes missing, Clarissa is met with conflicting emotions.

Director Statement

I’ve always been inspired by dreams and I wanted to mimic a dream quality in my filmmaking. I wanted In a Warm, Dark Place to have elements of a dream where objects and places seem to briefly exist, but to also pair that with the harsh reality of losing one’s child.

Runtime: 10 minutes 2 seconds

Completion Date: May, 2016

Production Budget: 3,000 USD

Country of Origin: USA

Film Language: English

Shooting Format: Digital

Aspect Ratio: 16:9

Student Project: Yes