The 24th annual Tribeca Festival, presented by OKX, today announced competition winners, with Charliebird, Happy Birthday, and Natchez taking top honors in the live-action dominated U.S. Narrative, International Narrative, and Documentary competitions, respectively. Among the prize winners, Matteo Burani’s Playing God (Italy/France) won the Academy Award-qualifying prize for Best Animated Short. The stop-motion piece screened in Tribeca’s narrative competition rather than its animated shorts program.
The Festival concludes on June 15 in New York City.
Winners of the Audience Award, which are determined by audience votes throughout the Festival, will be announced at a later date. The full list of winners from the juried awards announcement is available at tribecafilm.com.
In Playing God, a clay sculpture comes to life in the darkness of workshop, surrounded by strange creatures. The Jury praised the film as, “Visceral and experimental, using the form to its greatest abilities — this beautiful exploration of existential turmoil is at the heart of cinema — why are we here, how did we get here, what would it be like to have the thumb of god in your hand, and what is the price when one yearns to be free?”
Directed by Matteo Burani, written by Burani and Gianmarco Valentino, produced and animated by Arianna Gheller and with puppets crafted by Sole Piccininno, Playing God is a Studio Croma production, in co-production with Autour de Minuit with the support of the Emilia-Romagna Region through the Emilia-Romagna Film Commission, MIC Direzione Generale Cinema e Audiovisivo, CNC Center National Du Cinema Et De l’Image Animèe. The film has been selected for the Venice International Film Festival’s Critic’s Week sidebar, as well as this week’s Annecy Festival, and won the Best Short Film Fedic Award at Mostra.
In addition to the main prize, a Special Jury Mention was awarded to another stop-motion short, Petra and the Sun from Chilean directors Malu Furche and Stefania Malacchini, which made its North American premiere at the festival. It tells the story of an isolated elderly woman who uncovers the perfectly preserved corpse of a mountaineer from the last century, during a major snowmelt in the Andes. The Jury noted the film’s “attention to detail, the specificity of longing and loneliness, and the immersive quality of this stop-motion character study created a moving experience. The texture and visible traces of the human hand brought a delicate realism in this story about an unusual and unforgettable chance encounter.”
Furche and Malacchini wrote, directed and produced the film, with Kike Ortega as animation director. Producers also include Antonia Piña and Yeniffer Fasciani. Wasia is handling distribution for Petra and the Sun worldwide.
The film was selected for the MIFA Pitches program at the 2022 Annecy Festival:
