Short film makes ‘Wave’ as it gets longlisted for Oscar

Mon, 20 Nov, 2017 - 10:36

The country’s oldest film festival came to a close last night with Irish short film ’Wave’ now in contention for an Oscar, after being selected as the Grand Prix Irish Short winner at the Cork Film Festival 2017 Awards Ceremony, writes Noel Baker.

Benjamin Cleary and TJ O’Grady Peyton’s winning short will now go on the longlist for the 90th Academy Awards in the Live Action Short Film category after the duo received the award last night ahead of the sold-out Closing Gala screening of Downsizing at The Everyman Theatre. The film tells the story of Gasper Rubicon, who wakes from a coma speaking a fully formed but unrecognisable language.

It is not the first time Benjamin Cleary has experienced Oscar exposure as his 2015 short, ’Stutterer’ won the Oscar for Best Live Action Short at the 88th Academy Awards.

It was just one of the awards handed out to winning films selected during the 62nd Cork Film Festival, with the winner of the Grand Prix International Short Award, Mahdi Fleifel’s ’A Drowning Man’, also automatically qualifying for the Academy Awards longlist.

Cork Film Festival Producer and CEO Fiona Clark said: “Wave is a very deserving winner, and is a worthy inclusion on the Academy Awards’ longlist.  The quality of shorts within this year’s Festival programme has been exceptional, highlighting creativity and diversity in both subject matter and form."

The Shorts Jury also selected Linda Curtin’s ’Everything Alive is in Movement’, as the winner of the Best Cork Short, while Best Documentary Short went to Mia Mullarkey’s ’Mother & Baby’, a documentary on survivors of the Tuam mother and baby home, which had its world premiere as part of the Bord Scannán na hÉireann/the Irish Film Board World Premiere Shorts programme.

Festival senior programmer Don O’Mahony presents ‘Everything Alive is in Movement’ director Linda Curtin with the award for Best Cork Short.

Other prize winners announced at the closing ceremony included ’Untitled’, directed by Michael Glawogger and Monika Will, which won the Gradam Na Féile Do Scannáin Faisnéise / Award for Cinematic Documentary, and Rima Das’ ’Village Rockstars’, which follows a young village girl in northeast India who wants to start her own rock band. The Cork Film Festival Youth Jury Award went to ’Last Man in Aleppo’, directed by Feras Fayyad. The film follows the rescue work of Syrian volunteers, The White Helmets.