ONCE UPON IN THE FUTURE: 2121, LOST IN THE SKY, ECHO PINES EARN TOP HONOURS AT SCIENCE FICTION FESTIVAL AWARDS NIGHT

A darkly comic dystopian vision of family dynamics in an underground society has taken out The Ron Cobb Best Film Award at the 2023 Sydney Science Fiction Film Festival.

Hailing from Turkiye, Once Upon a Time in the Future: 2121 (Bir Zamanlar Gelecek: 2121), which previously won Best Film at Sci-Fi London, can now add Australia’s leading sci-fi trophy to its award cabinet. The bracingly original concept was brought to life by Serpil Altin, the first Turkish woman to direct a genre feature in her homeland.

The award love was spread across several country’s genre sectors, exemplifying the global reach of the festival, now in its fourth year. Niamh Carolan took Best Actress honours for her angst-ridden turn in John Barnard’s Canadian thriller, Wintertide; Seann Walsh just pipped his co-star Scott Haran in the Best Actor category for his charismatic bad-guy turn in The Bystanders; and, Bulgarian auteur Theodore Ushev took directing honours for his wildly-inventive, Gilliam-esque vision, Φ1.618.

Two Special Festival awards were bestowed for features of unique originality and artistry. Iranian actor/director Shahab Hosseini’s Residents of Nowhere, an adaptation of the afterlife text Hote des deux mondes by Eric Emmanuel Schmitt, and Takayuki Ohashi’s Distant Thunder, the story of three sisters reuniting during Earth’s final hours, were both recognised for profoundly representing mortality and humanity within the fantasy genre.  

Simon Öster’s Lost in the Sky took home the Best International Short Film, with several patrons commenting post-screening on the emotional impact of the Swedish film; Stephanie Begg’s well-travelled detective story Echo Pines finally found some hometown love, with the X-Files-like thriller taking Best Australian Short; Julia Vyshnevska (Best Actress for The Orb), Blair Redford (Best Actor for The Many Worlds of George Goodwin) and Lia Tsalta (Best Director for Magma) rounded out the short narrative categories.

Best Animated Film was won by Sydney-based FX maestro Christian Debney for his moving space travel drama, Starship. Best Student Film went to the Chinese sector, for Jiamin Jiao’s The Deep Love, shot as part of her studies at the Communication University of China.    

FULL LIST OF WINNERS, RUNNERS-UP AND NOMINEES:

2023 RON COBB BEST FILM AWARD: Named in honour of the late Ron Cobb, an adopted son of Sydney and iconic conceptual artist on such films as Dark Star, Alien, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Conan the Barbarian and The Abyss.
RESIDENTS OF NOWHERE (D: Shahab Hosseini; Iran)
DISTANT THUNDER (D: Takayuki Ohashi; Japan)
**WINNER** ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE FUTURE: 2121 (D: Serpil Altin; Turkiye)
WINTERTIDE (D: John Barnard)
*Runner-Up* MEMORY OF WATER (D: Saara Saarela; Finland)
PHI 1.618 (D: Theodore Ushev; Bulgaria)
THE BYSTANDERS (D: Gabriel Foster Prior; UK)

SPECIAL MENTIONS: FOR PROFOUNDLY REPRESENTING MORTALITY AND HUMANITY WITHIN THE FANTASY GENRE
RESIDENTS OF NOWHERE (D: Shahab Hosseini; Iran)
DISTANT THUNDER (D: Takayuki Ohashi; Japan) 

BEST SHORT FILM (International)
*Runner-Up* MAGMA (D: Lia Tsalta; Greece)
THE DRAFT (D: Raphaela Wagner; UK)
**WINNER** LOST IN THE SKY (D: Simon Öster; Sweden)
THE WISE OLD OWL (D: Quentin Porte; France)
ASSIMILATED (D: Vance Crofoot; USA)
THE BALLAD OF MADDOG QUINN (D: Matt Inns; New Zealand)

2023 BEST SHORT FILM (Australian)
WHITE NOISE (D: Bryce McLellan)
SALVATION (D: Kitty Moroney)
**WINNER** ECHO PINES (D: Stephanie Begg)
EXO-226 (D: Denai Grace)
FIRST-ISH CONTACT (D: Kai Smythe)
*Runner-Up* RETURN CHUTE: SURVIVAL OF A SMALL TOWN VIDEO STORE (D: Simone Attallah)

2023 BEST ACTRESS (Short Film)
DANIELLE KING (Echo Pines; Australia)
**WINNER** JULIA VYSHNEVSKA (The Orb; Ireland)
ANN WILSON (White Noise; Australia)
*Runner-Up* MAGGIE PIRIE (The Ballad of Maddog Quinn; New Zealand)
ANKE SABRINA BEERMAN (The Draft; UK)
CASSIE STIRIES (Pinwheel Horizon; USA)

2023 BEST ACTOR (Short Film)
HERMAN GABHIR (The Traveler; USA)
**WINNER** BLAIR REDFORD (The Many Worlds of George Goodman; USA)
YEONGPYO KIM (Sentence; Republic of Korea)
KAI SMYTHE (First-ish Contact; Australia)
**Runner-Up** ROERD TOCE (Erik; Albania)
GRADY ROSEVEAR-FERRICKS (Beam Me Up; Australia)

2023 BEST ACTRESS (Feature Film)
SELEN OZTURK (Once Upon a Time in the Future; Turkiye)
**WINNER** NIAMH CAROLAN (Wintertide; Canada)
*Runner-Up* SAGA SARKOLA (Memory of Water; Finland)
ANDREA TRAPET (The Antares Paradox; Spain)
MARTINA APOSTOLOVA (Phi 1.618; Bulgaria)
ZOSIA MAMET (Molli and Max in the Future; USA)

2023 BEST ACTOR (Feature Film) 
**WINNER** SEANN WALSH (The Bystanders; UK)
SCOTT HARAN (The Bystanders; UK)
BEN KINGSLEY (Jules; USA)
*Runner-Up* ABE GOLDFARB (First Time Caller; USA)
DEYAN DONKOV (Phi 1.618 Bulgaria)
ARISTOTLE ATHARI (Molli and Max in the Future; USA)

2023 BEST DIRECTOR (Feature Film)
*Runner-Up* SAARA SAARELA (Memory of Water; Finland)
JOHN BARNARD (Wintertide; Canada)
**WINNER** THEODORE USHEV (Phi 1.618; Bulgaria)
TAKAYUKI OHASHI (Distant Thunder; Japan)
SERPIL ALTIN (Once Upon a Time in the Future; Turkiye)
MICHAEL LUKK LITWAK (Molli and Max in the Future; USA)

2023 BEST DIRECTOR (Short Film) 
**WINNER** LIA TSALTA (Magma; Greece)
DENAI GRACE (EXO-226; Australia)
SIMON ÖSTER (Lost in the Sky; Sweden)
IAN SWEENEY (Time Tourists; New Zealand)
KITTY MORONEY (Salvation; Australia)
*Runner-Up* FRANCESCO PABLO CORDARO and ANDREA CORDARO (Awake; USA)

2023 BEST STUDENT FILM
RECORD. PLAY. STOP (D: Neeraj Bhattacharjee; India)
*Runner-Up* OBELISK (D: Sida Xie; Australia)
**WINNER** THE DEEP LOVE (D: Jiamin Jiao; China)
ECHO PINES (D: Stephanie Begg; Australia)
PROTOTYPE (D: Abril Ruzmed; Germany)
THE STAR TO EVERY WANDERING BARK (D: Patrick Traynor; Australia)

2023 BEST ANIMATED FILM
A ROBOT'S DREAM (D: Morteza Halimi; Australia)
*Runner-Up* SILEO (D: Demeter Lorent; Hungary)
INNERMOST (D: Maing Caochong; China)
**WINNER** STARSHIP (D: Christian Debney; Australia)
FLITE (D: Tim Webber; UK)
MIRA (D: Francesca Armstrong; New Zealand)

GLOBAL PERSPECTIVE CELEBRATED IN WINNER’S ROSTER AT SYDNEY SCIENCE FICTION FILM FESTIVAL AWARDS NIGHT

Beniamino Cantena’s debut feature VERA DE VERDAD and hometown favourite Jonathan Adam’s charming short DAILY DRIVER have taken Best Film honours in their respective categories in The 2021 Sydney Science Fiction Film Festival, held Sunday at the Actors Centre Australia.

The films led an eclectic roster of winners selected from the 21 features and 78 short films made eligible as part of the festival's first ever foray into ‘hybrid programming’. The 4-day live event wrapped Sunday 14th, while the online program will run via the Xerb streaming platform until Thursday 25th.  

An Italian/Chilean co-production that comes to Sydney via festival placements in Torino, Trieste, Brussels and Chuncheon, Vera De Verdad tells a deeply moving story of soul transference and shared destiny and stars Marcelo Alonso and Maria Gastini, both nominated in their respective lead acting categories. (Pictured, right: Vera de Verdad director, Beniamino Cantena) 

The Best Film category is named in honour of the late production designer Ron Cobb, whose conceptual artistry is central to the iconic status of such works as Star Wars, Conan the Barbarian, Alien, Aliens, The Abyss, Total Recall and the TV series Firefly. Cobb married an Australian woman and lived in Sydney from the 1970s until his passing in September, 2020.    

Other feature film winners included Ben Tedesco, crowned Best Actor for his self-directed performance in the lockdown time-loop drama NO TOMORROW; Peruvian actress Haydeé Cáceres for her wordless but wondrous lead turn in Aldo Salvini’s MOON HEART; and, exciting multi-hyphenate Carlson Young for her unique vision as director of the festival’s Opening Night film, THE BLAZING WORLD (pictured, left).

Also in contention for Director and Actor trophies, Daily Driver took top short film honours but ceded other categories to U.K. filmmaker Ryan Andrews (Best Director for HIRAETH) and French leading man Denis Hubleur (Best Actor for CAUSA SUI). Melbourne-based Jessica Tanner earned Best Actress for her blistering turn as the shell-shocked victim of cyclical domestic abuse in Andrew Jaksch’s controversy-courting drama TODAY.

The Audience Award winners were Eddie Arya’s RISEN, an ambitious alien invasion epic that filmed in Sydney and Canada over a four year period, and Spanish effects master Jorge Corpi’s CGI short-film thrill-ride, ELLIPSIS.

The 2021 Sydney Science Fiction Film Festival ‘Virtual Festival Experience’ will continue until November 25 here: https://xerb.tv/channel/sydneysciencefictionfilmfestival/virtual-events

The full list of award nominees and winners are:              

BEST ACTOR in a SHORT FILM

• Ryan Shrime, ORBITAL CHRISTMAS
• (WINNER) Denis Hubleur, CAUSA SUI
• Eric Whitten, PRISONER #1616
• David Lee Huynh, SOLITARY
• Andrew Scott, COGNITION
• Callum McManis, DAILY DRIVER

BEST ACTRESS SHORT FILM

• Akiva Pacey, GIRL ON THE MOON
• Liz Cha, MARY’S ROOM
• (WINNER) Jessica Tanner, TODAY
• Olivia Ross, HIRAETH
• Irene Fernández, FAITH
• Lauren Grimson, MAYA

BEST ACTOR FEATURE FILM

• Marcelo Alonso, VERA DE VERDAD
• Tony Brockman, A GUIDE TO DATING AT THE END OF THE WORLD
• (WINNER) Ben Tedesco, NO TOMORROW
• Richard Rennie, CLAW
• Tom England, REPEAT
• Wang Ziyi, ANNULAR ECLIPSE

BEST ACTRESS FEATURE FILM

• Kerith Atkinson,  A GUIDE TO DATING AT THE END OF THE WORLD
• Chynna Walker, CLAW
• Carlson Young, THE BLAZING WORLD
• Lois Temel, LIGHTSHIPS
• (WINNER) Haydeé Cáceres, MOON HEART
• Marta Gastini, VERA DE VERDAD

BEST DIRECTOR SHORT FILM

• Camille Hollet-French, FREYA
• Jonathan Adams, DAILY DRIVER
• Carol Butrón, FAITH
• (WINNER) Ryan Andrews, HIRAETH
• Andrew Jaksch, TODAY
• Oliver Crawford, EVOLUTIONARY 

BEST DIRECTOR FEATURE FILM

• Kelsey Egan, GLASSHOUSE
• Aldo Salvini, MOON HEART
• Eddie Arya, RISEN
• Zhang Chi, ANNULAR ECLIPSE
• (WINNER) Carlson Young, THE BLAZING WORLD
• Beniamino Catena, VERA DE VERDAD 

BEST SHORT FILM

• MAYA
• (WINNER) DAILY DRIVER (Producers: Jonathan Adams, Andrew Boland)
• HIRAETH
• FREYA
• REMOTE VIEWING
• EINSTEIN TELESCOPE 

THE RON COBB AWARD - BEST FEATURE FILM

• (WINNER) VERA DE VERDAD
• MOON HEART
• RISEN
• ANNULAR ECLIPSE
• GLASSHOUSE
• THE BLAZING WORLD  

AUDIENCE AWARD

• Feature Film - RISEN (Producer: Eddie Arya)
• Short Film - ELLIPSIS (Producer: Jorge Corpi)

LOOKING TO THE STARS: HOW SCIFI CAN LEAD US INTO THE POST-CORONAVIRUS WORLD

Guest columnist Anthea van den Bergh is a 'multi-platform journalist', a Melbourne-based freelance voice with a Masters degree in Journalism from the University of Melbourne. In late 2020, she approached several voices in the speculative cinema community (including Screen-Space editor and Festival Director of the Sydney Science Fiction Film Festival, Simon Foster) to comment on the role that science-fiction narratives might play in a world recovering from the unimaginable. The resulting article makes for a truly compelling appreciation of the role that scifi might play as society moves forward.... 

In the first two weeks of March last year as the coronavirus was declared a global pandemic by the World Health Organisation, one of the most streamed films in the world was Contagion, a science fiction plague film where 26 million people die.

Writers jumped at the opportunity to unpack this phenomenon. In a stunning display of deadpan, Nicole Sperling wrote in The New York Times, “One of the hottest movies in the Warner Bros. library is a nine-year-old drama that kills off Gwyneth Paltrow in its first 15 minutes.”

The film seemed skin crawlingly prophetic in light of the emerging pandemic, filled with all too familiar images of empty airports and offices, people wearing masks, warehouses of sick people, and hysteria over vaccines and supposed cures. But perhaps our fascination with the dystopian thriller tells us more about the human for stories and why we turn to science fiction in times of uncertainty and crisis.

Consider that besides Contagion, sales in plague fiction like Albert Camus’ The Plague went up by 150% worldwide last year, and tripled in France and Italy. Stephen King’s apocalyptic plague novel The Stand also had nearly double the number of online sales.

Scholars, scifi enthusiasts, and even neuroscientists have drawn connections for decades between times of crisis and people creating and watching science fiction. One proposed reason is that scifi helps us to navigate and prepare for future threats that are out of our control. To “simulate” the layers of fear and emotions we feel about scenarios like plagues, nuclear warfare, societal change, and ultimately to cope better.

Sometimes films depict literal threats like plagues and killer robots, but others portray more metaphorical scenarios that stand in for real threats, says Luke Devenish, a professional screenwriter and lecturer on genre screenwriting at The University of Melbourne.

For example, he says creatures like zombies are often a representation of plagues and disease – think Will Smith’s I am Legend (pictured, left).

While other figures like King Kong represent a scifi sub-genre called “Earth’s Revenge” where the Earth sends an agent to punish us, usually for our arrogance and destruction of the environment. Godzilla, for instance, can be read as a metaphor for nuclear destruction after the bombing of Japan in World War II.

Given the past 12 months, none of it now seems particularly farfetched.

“I mean we are living in a dystopia right now,” says Devenish (pictured, below). “A dystopia is a society where something is fundamentally wrong with it.”

He says Contagion, whose screenwriter Scott Z. Burns consulted closely with epidemiologists to construct a highly plausible plague scenario, triggered our deepest existential fears about ourselves and the future.

The thriller, which depicted the origin of viruses like Covid-19 due to humans disrupting natural habitats, prompted us to ask: How will I manage this kind of reality? What will happen to my family, to my society?

Not that sci fi always gets it right. Or even often. The reality is that the genre’s ‘predictions’ over the years have been hit and miss.

On occasion, science fiction has predicted major new inventions. Indeed, the idea for the helicopter is attributed by its inventor to writer Jules Verne who described it in his 1886 novel, The Clipper of the Clouds. Verne had previously written that “Anything that one man can imagine, another man can make real.”

Similarly, something very closely resembling the flip phone appeared in the 1979 Star Trek movie which inspired Motorola’s 1996 model, named “StarTAC” after the film.

However, most of the time the genre falls short of prophesy. Who else sighed when the year 2015 arrived and the world looked nothing like the future predicted in Back to the Future II, decked out with flying cars, hoverboards and self-tying Nikes?

Even Stephen King responded on Twitter about his novel The Stand, where around 99% of the world’s population die, saying, “No, coronavirus is NOT like THE STAND. It’s not anywhere near as serious. It’s eminently survivable. Keep calm and take all reasonable precautions.”

But with the coronavirus changing the world as we know it, perhaps science fiction, from the plague variety to stories based in outer space, could help us navigate not just our current reality, but also the post-coronavirus world.

While the genre may not give an exact blueprint, we could use it to process different realities such as widespread technological advances and use of AI and robots, which we could be racing towards thanks to the pandemic.

Scifi creators have been fixated with AI and robots since the early twentieth century technology boom. We’ve seen the emergence of the sociopathic killer trope in films such as the early German silent flick Metropolis (1927; pictured, left), evolving into The Terminator and The Matrix, as well as more nuanced villains like the haunting Hal 9000 in 2001: Space Odyssey.

And while recent decades have brought us some cuddlier or good guy robots (think WALL-E, Marvel’s Vision), when it comes to AI we remain both fascinated and fearful – fears that are often amplified by scifi.

Scifi often deals with cautionary tales about technology and the misuse of power. The idea of the surveillance state is the nightmare of many classic scifi films such as V for Vendetta, Gattaca, and of course, Orwell’s 1984.

Yet neuro-psychology researchers at Georgetown University Medical Center believe the genre could help us to mentally rehearse and ultimately work through the range of conflicting emotions we continue to feel about technology and the future.

And there is plenty to work through.

With the mammoth efforts going into stopping the pandemic, the coronavirus could certainly be a catalyst for more robots and AI in healthcare and normal life in the future, says Stephen Bornstein (pictured, right), the CEO of the cutting-edge robotics and AI company, Cyborg Dynamics Engineering. (“Yeah, I wanted a cool sounding name,” Bornstein laughs.)

His Brisbane company works mainly with the Australian Defence Force making ground robots and automated technology to support troops entering dangerous areas. “If you think about ground robots in the military, the question is how do we get a human out of harm’s way and use machines instead?”

The 2017 Australian Young Engineer of the Year says the same thinking is being applied to coronavirus around the world. In places such as Wuhan, Seoul and Northern Italy, robots have been used to disinfect rooms, take people’s temperature using infrared sensors and deliver food to Covid patients. One of the robots that visits patients has a cute digital face, wearing a mask. We’ve even seen a robot “dog” called SPOT trialled in Singapore which encouraged social distancing in parks. SPOT is now being used in hospitals in Boston as a walking telehealth robot.

And in South Korea, AI-backed technology and surveillance (including street cameras and money transactions) has been used in contact tracing to find and isolate positive cases.

Scifi could help us to accept advanced futures (and not feel so nervous about seeing SPOT in the park). But in this case perhaps its role is to teach us to be rightly suspicious, to avoid a reality in which we’re ruled by Big Brother or the Tyrell Corporation in the 1982 Bladerunner, to be cautious about the technology we make.

We’ve seen a very contemporary version of this in the 2020 film, Songbird (pictured, right), which imagines the worst case scenario of the current pandemic – a highly mutated “Covid-23”, quarantine camps, helicopters overhead, and ominous sanitation goons willing to break down your door.

But these warnings come with the promise of a more hopeful future, says Simon Foster (pictured, below), the Festival Director of the Sydney Science Fiction Film Festival and Sydney’s Monster Fest.

In his work across several film festivals, Foster has seen more of the scifi genre’s full breadth than most, from mainstream films that we know and love to indie films (both Australian and international) that range from the experimental to the positively avant garde.

“Science fiction and science do have a sort of love-hate relationship,” he says. “[But] the very best science fiction, even with an inherently bleak vision of society, speaks to a better vision and why it got so bad. It’s trying to direct us on a better path.

“Science fiction with a terrible society is saying we should avoid this terrible existence.”

Screenwriter Luke Devenish calls this the “caution with optimism combination”. He says Scifi films, even dystopian films like Contagion, are fundamentally life affirming and hopeful. “At the end of the day, technology is bested by the best of humanity, our resilience… The things we treasure about humanity come to the fore.”

Scifi isn’t just about plagues, technology and aliens, he says, but about heroism, big and small, our faith in humanity, and what drives us to carry on when nothing is the same. It’s telling us, ultimately, that we will be okay.

“Do you notice there are no countries in Star Trek? We’re just from planet Earth.”

Science fiction can also ask bigger questions.  And there’s nothing like the stars to make us feel a little existential, says Simon Foster.

From his years programming speculative film narratives, if there was one movie he’d recommend for perspective about the coronavirus and the future, it would be a film called ★. S-t-a-r.

★’s Viennese director Johann Lurf (pictured, right) is one of the world’s greatest montage filmmakers, taking clips from other artists and condensing them into an entirely different thing.

Featured in the 2018 Rotterdam International Film Festival, ★ is a film of the night sky and galaxies depicted over 105 years of cinema. Every time the camera panned up from someone’s back yard or looked out to the stars on a spaceship, the frame appears in Lurf’s film.

There isn’t a single person featured and Lurf doesn’t cut the sound from any of the clips. This produces a fascinating mix of cinematic orchestra music, 50s jazz crackling like paper, more modern sounds and of course that quintessential Star Wars orchestra.

“It’s an extraordinary film,” says Foster, “It speaks to why we still look to the stars as a species, [expressing] our fears and our hopes. The film worked over me like I’ve never experienced in cinema. It reinvigorated a sense of awe, a sense of scale. We’re still part of a much bigger universe.”

LIVE: THE LISA CHARLOTTE FRIEDRICH INTERVIEW

When Lisa Charlotte Friedrich began shooting her debut feature, it was speculative fiction. LIVE tells the story of a near-future where society, at the mercy of terrorist attacks, exists in perpetual lockdown; rebels, led by Claire (Karoline Reinke), plan a cultural event that will begin social reunification. Then, 2020 hit, and suddenly LIVE seemed not only the bracing science-fiction drama that Friedrich envisioned but also an alternate reality concept, capturing a longing for interaction that had become commonplace. For a first-time feature director, Friedrich found herself helming a work with relevance and resonance like few ever had.

Ahead of the film's Australian Premiere at the Sydney Science Fiction Film Festival's German Sci-Fi Showcase on Saturday February 27, Lisa Charlotte Friedrich generously spoke to SCREEN-SPACE about the science-fiction that inspires her, the genre cinema of her homeland and what she has taken away from directing her first feature... (Photo: ©Benno Kraehahn 2020)

SCREEN-SPACE: What have been the science-fiction works – books, films, art of any kind – that have inspired your work and forged your love for the genre?

FRIEDRICH: I have always devoured masterpieces like Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale - both the book and the first season of the series - Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner, Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World or Spike Jonze’s Her. I love the infinite aesthetic and narrative freedoms that come for the creator of these sci-fi worlds together with constraints of the inner logic, the restrictions to maintain credibility for the viewer or reader. What I love especially about Atwood’s work is her concept of speculative fiction; the worlds she creates that are just a different version of our present. (Pictured, above; Karoline Reinke, as Claire, in LIVE) 

SCREEN-SPACE: How did the original concept for your film take shape? What aspects of your film’s narrative and your protagonist’s journey were most important to you?

FRIEDRICH: At the beginning there was the story of Cain and Abel I wanted to make a film about. While developing my script I found out that I wanted to keep the sibling’s conflict under the blankets as long as possible. I was looking for a translation of the personal conflict into a social setting, a conflict affecting a whole society. This is how I ended up developing a world where terrorism has skyrocketed, so all public live has been shut down. I wanted my protagonist to be vulnerable, strong, flawed and accessible at the same time. She needed to face the conflict as old as mankind no matter what time she lived in.

LIVE Official Trailer from |li|ke| Filme on Vimeo.

SCREEN-SPACE: Does the ‘science-fiction’ genre have deep roots in the art and cultural history of your homeland? Were the resources, facilities and talent pool required to bring your film to life easily sourced?

FRIEDRICH: In Germany, science-fiction is more an exception than the common genre. At the festival where LIVE had its premier, the Filmfestival Max Ophüls Preis is the most important newcomer festival in Germany, we were the only sci-fi film in the competition; quite a few people approached us after the film telling us they liked it, especially for the fact that sci-fi is such a rarity in German films. Still, from time to time there are exceptions like Welt am Draht (World on a Wire, 1973) by Rainer Werner Fassbinder. Financing the film, we felt that it was neither a bonus nor a negative aspect that we were doing sci-fi. As to our team, we always had the impression that they liked the fact that we were doing something a bit more unusual, that the aesthetic departments had more freedom, that there were some challenges that needed extra attention but enabled us to create something „out of the box". (Pictured, above; Friedrich on-set, centre, shooting LIVE with Laura Krestan, left, and Ivàn Robles Mendoza)

SCREEN-SPACE: Describe for us the very best day you had in the life cycle of your film…

FRIEDRICH: It’s hard to say what my personal best day was. I had many moments while shooting the film that made me really happy, there were moments in the editing room or the mix when things started to work out that filled me with immense joy. But the very best day was probably our Premier at the Filmfestival Max Ophüls Preis in January 2020. We were sold out 3 times, the big cinema was stuffed until the last seat and it was the most amazing feeling to have this live audience in front of us showing them our film that was telling about forbidden live events. The atmosphere was overwhelming and it was such an incredible moment for us and the whole team to come together and celebrate our journey. Little we knew that only 7 weeks later we would in fact face closed theaters, cinemas, schools... (Pictured, above; Anton Spieker as Aurel, in LIVE) 

SCREEN-SPACE: Having guided your film from idea to completion, what lessons and advice would you offer a young science-fiction filmmaker about to embark on a similar journey?

FRIEDRICH: A key thing for me to understand in shooting a sci-fi film with nearly no budget was to differentiate between two kinds of conflicts / discussions. When it was worth spending money or investing my team's energy to find a sci-fi-appropriate solution for whatever my problem was, and when, on the other hand, it was necessary to move on, not spend any time or money and let go. We all have heard it a thousand times, but restrictions in fact do help to shape your ideas. So, in my experience, it was very important to embrace the restrictions and at the same time to know what you want to tell. As long as you know this one hundred percent, you will always find a solution, even without money. (Pictured, above; a scene from LIVE)

LIVE will have its Australian Premiere as part of the German Sci-Fi Showcase, Saturday February 27 from 4.00pm at the Actors Centre Australia. Tickets are available via the event's Eventbrite page.

LIVE_MAKING_of from |li|ke| Filme on Vimeo.

PREVIEW: 2020 BERLIN SCI-FI FILMFEST

The COVID curse has forced the festival out of theatres and into living rooms, but the quality and quantity of science-fiction films coming out of the 2020 Berlin Sci-Fi Filmfest remains unrivalled on the genre film circuit.

A mammoth 110 films from 28 countries will bulk up the 4th edition, held once again under the stewardship of co-directors Alexander Pfander, Isabella Hermann and Anthony Straeger. The festival has had to abandon its long-held alliance with the Babylon Theatre in Mitte, instead screening this year’s films via the XERB Virtual Cinema platform. However, The Babylon Kino is not forgotten; it will be represented in the line-up by Martin Reinhart and Virgil Widrich’s experimental short, tx-reverse 360°, a mesmerising work shot at 10K resolution with an OmniCam-360° rig inside the iconic venue.

Seven features will screen at the Berlin Sci-Fi Filmfest, each one exemplifying the vastness of vision the genre offers. Brett Ryan Bonowicz premieres the second part of his Artist Depiction documentary series, with profiles of speculative visualists William K. Hartmann, Pamela Lee and Pat Rawlings; indie sector giggles are assured in Ryan Barton-Grimley’s buddy comedy/horror romp, Hawk and Rev Vampire Slayers and Justin Timpane’s A Christmas Cancellation, a ‘Purple Rose of Cairo’-style TV-world-meets-real-world charmer; the ‘post-apocalyptic dystopia’ slot is filled this year by A Feral World, David Liban’s stunningly-designed mother’s journey drama; and, Neil Rowe’s lo-fi/hi-energy invasion thriller, Alien Outbreak (pictured, above).

For the more adventurous viewer, there is Mark Christensen’s underground experimental 'lost film', Box Head Revolution (pictured, below), a cinematic journey which began two decades ago with early digital-video cameras and no budget and which has been recovered and reinstated to its intended ultra-bizarre status; and, Søren Peter Langkjær Bojsen’s Danish oddity, A Report on the Party and Guests, in which a humanlike creature slowly reveals his mission reporting on the dwindling human activity in an increasingly automated world.

The remainder of the 2020 Berlin Sci-Fi Filmfest is the kind of short film showcase for which the event has become famous worldwide. Arguably, the centrepiece will be The Dach Shorts Session, a cross-section of the finest works from Germany, Austria and Switzerland; amongst the roster are Marcus Hanisch’s Q; ghostly remote effect, Franz Ufer’s existential drama, The Ticket; and, the European Premiere of directors Evgeny Kalachikhin and Ruben Dauenhauer’s post-apocalyptic mini-feature, CYCLE 2217.

Symbolising the Berlin Sci-Fi Filmfest’s standing internationally is the collaboration they share with China’s Blue Planet Science Fiction Film Festival. This year, seven Chinese short productions will screen to German sci-fi fans ahead of their homeland premieres in Nanjing; they are Cupcake (Dir: Zhang Dawei); Recluse (Dir: Ou Dingding); Basement Millionaire (Dir: Zha Shan); 16 (Dir:Xin Chengjiang); Isabella (Director: Wei Qihong); and, The Chef (Dir: Yuan Gen). A special highlight will be the premiere of Through the Fog, a co-production between the Berlin Sci-Fi Filmfest and the Chinese festival, from directors Peng Xiangjun and Luan Luyang.

The 2020 BERLIN SCI-FI FILMFEST is available to watch via XERB Virtual Cinema from November 27 to December 7. Numbers are limited, so be quick. Session passes and ticket packages can be purchased here.