I WON THE FICC!!!

I AM JUMPING WITH JOY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I JUST WON THE 49TH EDITION OF THE FICC!!!!!

I can’t believe it!!! The Wedding Cake was chosen as best shortfilm for this edition of the FICC Festival Internacional de Cine de Cartagena! Starting at 31:34 you can watch the presenter introducing the mayor of the City of Cartagena, Ana Belén Castejón Hernández, announcing my victory, and following that myself thanking for the win, super emotional! I did that in Spanish, with the help of my super friend Giulia Colavolpe Severi!

Here is the English translation of my short speech:
“I am delighted to win this award. I would never have imagined winning at such a big and prestigious festival, among so many fantastic competitors. I am humbled and moved by your appreciation and I enjoy it even more because this short film means so much to me. It is a pilot for a larger art project on prostitution and pornography that I hope to complete one day. Winning this award today gives me hope and makes me feel supported in my desire that one day that larger project will see the light of day. Once again, thank you from the bottom of my heart!”

 

The Wedding Cake at the 74th edition of the Festival di Salerno!

The Wedding Cake enters the competition at the 74th edition of the Festival Internazionale del Cinema di Salerno! It is one of the oldest festivals in Italy as it was started at the end of the war, in 1946, to host 16 mm films instead of 35 mm ones.

A long history therefore, of which I am obviously proud to be a part.

“Animacion para adultos” reviews “The Wedding Cake”!

I feel truly elated by this review of “The Wedding Cake” by the Spanish site Animación para adultos that makes me happy not only for its important content but also for the very high score I got: 8.5/10!

I want to thank again both Mikael Moiner for his photography and Adriana Rosati, who took care of the scenography, both rightly highlighted in the review. The short is scheduled online this week at the splendid FICC – Festival de Cine de Cartagena.

Here is a translation of the text from Spanish:

The Wedding Cake narrates the drama of a woman who is forced into prostitution to avoid the jail that awaits her if she does not pay the debts of her husband, who has run away and left her alone with her two children. The shocking story is illustrated with Playmobil figurines, so a huge contrast is created between the innocence and inexpressiveness of the photos and the harshness of the narrative. There is, on the other hand, a brilliant staging, such as the wedding cake-childbirth scene, and the one that shows the inhuman prostitution sessions to which the protagonist was subjected.
The short also raises the debate on whether or not this can be considered animation, because although it uses a shooting technique identical to that of stop-motion with figurines, the slowness with which it moves from one frame to another prevents the illusion of movement from being created. I do believe that it is animation, a kind of slow and experimental stop-motion, but I understand that there are those who do not agree. In any case, inviting this reflection on its nature is just one of the many valuable aspects of The Wedding Cake, although the main one is its denunciation of the women trafficking networks, a scourge of contemporary society against which we must keep on fighting.

“The Wedding Cake” at the Palm Spring Animation FF!

OMG!! I can’t honestly believe it: The Wedding Cake made it thru 2,500 submissions and is selected for the Palm Springs International Animation Festival & Expo 2020! It feels almost unreal because this time I was really competing in the same category of everyone else, so… wow!

So wish me luck for December 12-13, 2020 at the Mary Pickford Theatre!

Once again, thank you to my magical team, you deserve this!