Festival Review: Calgary Independent Film Festival – April 2021

The April 2021 edition of the Calgary Independent Film Festival is held in Calgary, Alberta.  Many awards have been given out to the talented filmmakers in various categories for the Calgary Independent Film Festival April 2021 season. Here are some award winners and semi-finalist films worth watching.

THE PUDDLE – Category: Best Experimental Short

Director: Serdar Yilmaz, Turkey

Experimental shorts are a work of art and abstract. Director Serdar Yilmaz has really gone all out with this idea in ‘The Puddle’.  The short follows a man browsing through an outdoor market full of artistic endeavors from posters to art creations made by local merchants.  The man encounters a blue creature that comes to life, introducing stop-motion and animation sequences that begin to transition to multiple experimental effects on the man deviating away from reality.

GIRL AND ROBOT – Category: Best Short Animation

Director: Joe Loftus, Ireland

‘Girl and Robot’, winner of the Best Short Animation category, is about a girl running through a desert away from the law of the patrol officers.  She appears to have some traumatic issues as her behavior is seen erratic in the short film.  She meets a robot who was lonely and wanted a friend, whom befriended the girl.  They both work together to fight off the patrol officers, giving a subtle cool reference to the popular Capcom video game series, Mega Man.  The animation resembles a modern comic style similar to Johnny Bravo.

AFTER THE WALL – Category: Best Documentary Short

Director: Darcy Tithecott, Canada

The Berlin Wall & and Toronto-based dancers.  This documentary short directed by Darcy Tithecott focuses on the dancers’ interpretative dance performance, where they follow their rehearsal and interviews of how they use dance to represent the history and what emotions that was felt with the history of taking down the Berlin Wall.  A great medium to look back at the historical events and impacts to the people’s lives that were affected in his historic event, and to see the interviews of dancers and their perspectives of how they use their skillset to translate it into their motion of art.

TINDER LOVING CARE – Category: Best Comedy Short Film

Director: Jack Judd, United Kingdom

‘Tinder Loving Care’ is a comedy short film that has received seven film festival selections and a couple of wins, including in this April 2021 season.  This is about Joe who found a love match on the dating app Tinder and is telling his friend Sarah all about his new “girlfriend”.  Sarah checks out her profile, becomes a bit suspicious about this new girl as he JUST matched with this girl two hours ago.

WIDE OPEN – Category: Best Web Series

Director: Daniela Dimitrova, Bulgaria

This short film is about a secret encounter between an escort and a client in a hotel room.  What the interesting twist of this plot is that the rendezvous is not a typical physical exchange of sexual services, even though the scene was implying that is what it is supposed to be, having sex. Instead, the film introduces the idea of both characters being emotionally unavailable leading to a breakthrough of the encounter being different from what the audience expected to see.

WOMEN NOT PERMITTED – Category: Best LGBTQ Short

Director: Brad McDermott, Canada

‘Women Not Permitted’ is a brilliant take on a “Woman” exposing three gay men in a bathhouse about the misogynistic and condescending conversations about their dislike for women.  The Woman shows past recorded scenes of what the gay men say behind women’s backs about their stereotypical perceptions, thinking that they are funny jokes, but lies behind dark half-truths of actually feeling their hatred for the opposite gender.  The film speaks out on what is perceived to be an ongoing issue about this matter that has not got the attention to address this matter until now.

$700+ – Category: Best Thriller

Director: Tom Aspy, United States

The story is about an Eastern European woman who is interested in a job opportunity and is interviewed by a mysterious man, asking some personal questions about her.  Desparate for money and just having moved to the United States, she takes on a job she never expected to take.