Official Selection 2021

Thirty six short films, from twenty three different countries. These are the selected shorts that will take part in the Official Selection for the 5th edition of Planos Film Festival.


 

1971

Directed by Magnus Häll
Sweden | Drama | 2020

In a small croft on the Swedish countryside, 25-year-old Mary lives in her quiet and self-chosen solitude. On a hot late summer day, her precious silence is disturbed by a knock on the door. It’s Jack, a handsome man in his 30s who needs help with his car.

We follow Mary in her thoughts and actions as she questions karma, and we are forced to ask ourselves what’s right and what’s wrong, what’s true and what’s fiction.


A Dark in the Light

 

A Dark in the Light

Directed by Tobias Karbe
Germany | Drama | 2020

While under the influence, a young diplomat kills a judge’s wife and daughter in a car accident. The very laws the judge used to enforce rigorously throughout his career, do now protect his family’s killer from prosecution.


A Sound in Motion - Um Som em Movimento

 

A Sound in Motion

Directed by Ricardo Teixeira
Portugal | Drama | 2020

Rodrigo challenges Joana to dance again. The rhythm is the same but she hasn’t heard it in the same way since the accident. Rodrigo’s will, Joana’s anger and another way of listening to the world reveal new challenges. Will Joana be able to adapt to a new normal? Will Rodrigo have the strength to help Joana overcome this new condition?


Anna

 

Anna

Directed by Dekel Berenson
United Kingdom / Ukraine | Social Drama | 2019

Living in war-torn Eastern Ukraine, Anna is an aging single mother who is desperate for a change. Lured by a radio advertisement, she goes to party with a group of American men who are touring the country, searching for love.


Any Car

 

Any Car

Directed by David P. Sañudo
Spain | Dark Comedy | 2019

Manuel wants to get in his car but three bullies prevent him. “What have you done inside that nightclub?”.


Bad Seed - Erva Daninha

 

Bad Seed

Directed by Guilherme Daniel
Portugal | Drama / Horror / Thriller | 2019

A black seed takes root in the spirit of a man and a woman.
A couple cultivates seemingly infertile ground. One day they find a dark seed on the soil. That seed will grow and become a strange influence on their behavior.


Bathtub by the Sea - Fyrvaktaren

 

Bathtub by the Sea

Directed by Ole-André Rønneberg
Norway | Drama / Fantasy | 2019

Day in, and day out Gunnar is doing the same things. He drinks his coffee, fishes with his boat, and on Wednesdays and Saturdays he is having his out door bath. But one day a mermaid comes in with the tides, and he must use his bathtub for her. When the bathing day comes and the bathtub is occupied it is getting complicated for Gunnar.


Bless me Father

 

Bless Me, Father

Directed by Boubkar Benzabat
France | Comedy | 2020

A man goes to the church in order to confess his last sin to an exasperated young priest.


Bottleneck

 

Bottleneck

Directed by Måns Berthas
Sweden | Drama / Thriller | 2019

Three women are gathered for an act of vengeance. They spin a bottle to determine who should perform the deed. Their plan goes wrong and an unexpected threat appears.


Cheeky Monkey

 

Cheeky Monkey

Directed by Guillermo Dieste & Eduardo Dieste
Spain | Family / Romance / Coming of Age | 2019

Cristina y Fran, a young couple travels by car through Madrid. During the journey they initiate a discussion where they question the roles that each one must play when their future child is born. Through this trip we will discover how the society in which we grow influences us in each of our relationships.


Father-Time

 

Father-Time

Directed by Martin Iliev
Bulgaria | Drama / Coming of Age | 2019

An ever absent father has only few minutes to teach his eleven-year-old son a life lesson before leaving him again.


Fish

 

Fish

Directed by Ingrid Liavaag
Norway | Drama / Coming of Age | 2020

Lost in life and suffering from severe eczema, which turns her skin into fish scales, Sarah travels to see her father whom she hardly knows. Their bad relationship makes her unable to open up to him about her problems. While on a boat trip together out at sea, Sarah dives into the water. In despair and unable to communicate, she tries to find an escape. She finds freedom in the sea.


From the Other Side - Do Outro Lado

 

From the Other Side

Directed by João Pereira
Portugal | Thriller | 2019

Nothing would predict that a casual date at the cinema for a passionate couple would end in a return from the past, a night that they strive to forget… But there is someone who, even today, suffers for who he lost and is carefully watching all of Laura’s and André’s steps.


Golden Minutes

 

Golden Minutes

Directed by Saulius Baradinskas
Lithuania | Social Drama | 2019

When a heart attack strikes, a person has exactly ten minutes to be saved by the people around him. In medicine, this short period of time is called “Golden Minutes”. Liudas has decided to hang himself. But he can’t do it until his apartment is clean and tidy, so he decides to take out the trash. Liudas takes the trash to a waste container next to a bus stop. But just as he reaches the container, Liudas collapses. He is struck by a heart attack. As Liudas is laying on the ground without any signs of life, the street around him is lively as usual: a jogger is looking for his dog, people are running to catch a bus to work, musicians in a hurry for a rehearsal step over Liudas, mistaking him for a homeless man. None of them, including an ambulance driving by, pay attention to Liudas, whose Golden Minutes are ticking away.


 

Her Name is Carla

Directed by Cátia Biscaia
Portugal | Drama | 2021

With her boyfriend arrested for drug dealing, Carla, 8 month pregnant, spends her days at the jail door. As the days go by, an unlikely relationship eventually emerges, putting everything in question.


Johnny - The Punisher

 

Johnny: The Punisher

Directed by César Santos
Portugal | Western | 2019

An angry young man wants to find the men who made his father hang in a 1900s western town.


Love Thy Neighbour

 

Love Thy Neighbour

Directed by Amanda Aagard & Alexander Toma
Sweden | Social Drama | 2019

Somewhere in a dystopian world a woman sees that her neighbour forgot to lock the door. Controlled by her naive curiosity she decides to break into his apartment. During her visit she uncovers a forbidden erotic painting. The woman, who has never exposed to this kind of art, feels something awakening inside of her. She finds and steals her neighbours spare key, knowing that she has to return. During her forthcoming visits she examines more and more personal belonging of her neighbour. She discovers literature, music and even dance. But the arts unleash an even bigger affection and lust. How far is she willing to go to calm her now uncontrollable needs?


 

Mila

Directed by Andreas Vakalios
Greece | Drama / Coming of Age | 2019

Based on a true story, “Mila” is a “polaroid picture” of a daughter’s and a father’s last encounter at the hospital. She is a twenty year old girl who likes to skate and who hates talking to her mom. He is a forty-five year old hospitalised alcoholic life artist. They haven’t spoken or seen each other for years. Their encounter at the hospital might change everything. Or, it might not.


 

Moço

Directed by Bernardo Lopes
Portugal | Drama, Coming of Age | 2020

Confronted with his mother’s infidelity and his father’s emotional absence, João arrives at a sunset where he refuses to return home.


Neo Kosmo - The New World

 

Néo Kósmo – The New World

Directed by Adelmo Togliani
Italy | Sci-Fi | 2020

Next future. People no longer communicate, except within a virtual reality called Néo Kósmo. This ‘parallel’ world can only be accessed by connecting through virtual reality helmets. In a bourgeois family composed of father, mother and two teenage children, a real process of dissociation from reality is taking place. Parents and children they spend whole days on the New World: they work, study, meet up. Absolute silence reigns in the house. Alésia, the family’s android-atmosphere, realizing that the process of social drift is irreversible, is intent on protecting the family’s youngest child, not yet initiated into the new dimension.


 

Pain

Directed by Anna Rose Duckworth
New Zealand | Drama, Coming of Age | 2020

A young girl has an earth-shattering realization that her father is not invincible, after a cricket accident exposes his vulnerability.


Pupone

 

Pupone

Directed by Alessandro Guida
Italy | Drama / Coming of Age | 2019

Rome, Spring 2017. Sacha is an Italian boy who grew up inside a group home. Like all his acquired “brothers”, he is fond of football and in particular of As Roma team. At the age of 18, however, Sacha is forced to abandon the facility where he grew up, thus finding himself living what is actually happening to his biggest idol: Francesco Totti. Like Sacha forced, indeed, to leave his home because of his seniority. The acquired freedom and the challenges that the outside world will present to him, however, will prove to be more difficult than expected to be managed. The short film is inspired by a true story, although adapted to cinematographic needs.


Rruga - The Path

 

Rruga / The Path

Directed by Besim Ugzmajli
Kosovo | Drama | 2019

After midnight, Lena (37) scared and fleeing, meets Genti (11) in an underpass at the center of the city. After they get to know each other, they talk about the reasons of them being there. Lena claims she is waiting for her husband to pick her up, while Genti is waiting for his father. Afterwards the conversation shifts to their respective head wounds. Genti says his injury was an accident caused by his father, while Lena’s was an accident caused by her husband during their vacation in Venice.


 

S2002.

Directed by Jonas Frost
Denmark | Drama | 2021

When the former soldier Rune gets a job at the suicide prevention lifeline, he must battle inner demons of his past, in order to help other people in distress. One day he recives a call that will change his life.


Scenes of a Love Life - Cenas de uma Vida Amorosa

 

Scenes of a Love Life

Directed by Miguel Afonso
Portugal | Romance / Comedy | 2019

Built in a meta-cinematic form, as if everyday life were a film organized by scenes and sequences. “Scenes of a Love Life” follows the intimacy of the relationship between Marta and Luis. A couple of young lovers who are trying to build a life together. Oscillating between affectionate and rather aggressive moments, Marta and Luis go on living the scenes of their love life inside a claustrophobic attic in Lisbon, that exacerbates the feelings they are experiencing, making everything very intense and sometimes too Dramatic. This film, which marks Miguel Afonso’s debut, addresses the pleasures and growing pains of two young people in a relationship. A kind of a generational portrait that starts from concrete situations, without any moralistic pretension or not just invite reflection on the vicissitudes of human relations.


Sofia

 

Sofia

Directed by Filipe Ruffato & Gonçalo Viana
Portugal | Drama | 2019

True art is the one that synthesizes the complexity of life. And this is Sofia: in a single bold ten-minute plan of plastic beauty we can see fears, misunderstandings, prejudices, cravings and desires, all of which come and go between the unsaid. An exercise on our precarious human condition.


 

Spoon

Directed by Victor Velasco
U. S. A. | Drama / Fantasy | 2019

In the city, a business man walks to work on a Monday morning when he’s interrupted by a junkie-like kid who asks him: Do you want some soup?

 


Stay Awake, Be Ready

 

Stay Awake, Be Ready

Directed by Pham Thien An
Vietnam | Social Drama | 2019

A motorbike crash happening before the street stalls on a street corner was embedded in the mysterious story of three young men.


Stuff

 

Stuff

Directed by Malu Janssen
Netherlands | Drama / Dark Comedy | 2019

When there is a break-in in her home, interior buyer Helen is in shock. She secretly mourns for her lost belongings with which she had intimate relationships. With this theft, she discovers that she has lost a part of herself that is not easy to replace. When she invites her friends over for an evening re-decorating her house, her detachment of her surrounding leads to a lurid finale.


Superhero

 

Superhero

Directed by Émile V. Schlesser
Luxembourg | Drama / Fantasy | 2020

A young man with Down syndrome, stakes on a superhero identity to muster the courage to profess his love to a childhood friend.


 

Survivers

Directed by Carlos Gómez-Trigo
Spain| Sci-Fi, Dark Comedy | 2020

Natural selection says that only those who adapt will survive. What if humans have become stupid?


The American Bull

 

The American Bull

Directed by Fatemeh Tousi
Iran | Drama | 2019

In a border village between Iran and Iraq, a group of villagers is doing animal husbandry.
Saheb, the teenage boy who owns the only male American bull, is heavily dependent on his bull and earns money by its servicing for breeding.


The Butterfly Love Song

 

The Butterfly Love Song

Directed by Luke Morgan
U. S. A. / Ireland | Romance / Comedy | 2019

A film by Project Spatula, produced by Morgan Creative, John Herbert and Seamus Scanlon. Based on the award-winning short story by Seamus Scanlon.


The Edge - A Margem

 

The Edge

Directed by Rodrigo Tavares
Portugal | Drama | 2019

Mary is a humble lady who abdicated her personal life in favor of her brother John who lives in a vegetative state after a childhood accident.
Amid difficulties imposed by her brother’s condition, she finds herself in a great dilemma:
She is sick and she discovers her cancer treatment has not been effective. Alone and helpless, Maria has to decide how to deal with João, unable to live on his own.


 

The Opposite of Eternity

Directed by Joshua Jádi
Austria | Drama | 2020

The Opposite of Eternity tells the story of Anna who tries to get her mother into the room where her father is dying so they can be together one last time. But her mother runs away. She runs and runs since hours and with her time is running out.

Anna has the difficult task of accompanying her mother Eva during the slow death of her father. She wants to gather the family one last time in one room. While she seems to almost break down at this task, her mother finds one reason after another not to enter the room next to the bedside of her dying husband. But Anna doesn’t give up and tries to put an end to her mother’s flight from reality.


The Silence of the River

 

The Silence of the River

Directed by Francesca Canepa
Peru | Drama | 2020

Juan, a 9 year-old kid, lives with his dad in a floating house across the amazon river. Through an oniric journey into the rainforest jungle, he will discover the truth about his dad.