The BFF Shorts Competition celebrates outstanding filmmaking across three categories: Best Film, Best Performance and Best Craft. This year, our wonderful jury is comprised of Brian Philip Davis, Grace Barber-Plentie and Zoë Nolan.
Best Film
The Lacey Way – dir. Regina de Faoite
The Lacey family live in a sheltered utopia. They work/learn/play at home, they say and do as Mammy Lacey says and does. But the eldest daughter George wants to go dancing, and this simple desire tears apart the family, and their cloistered world, entirely. This cautionary tale is sprinkled with moments of transcendent beauty, embodying the excitement and awe of discovering the world for yourself, and the terror of the unknown.
Best Performance
In Between (Philippa Dunne) – dir. Hannah Mamalis
Anna’s life is coming to an end. But don’t worry too much, another Anna will replace her. Feeling wistful in her final moments, Anna writes a letter for her successor containing her observations, her advice, her humble pleasures and her guilty pleasures. Director Hannah Mamalis distils the sweet absurdities of modern life into this surreal fable, perhaps you too will learn something along the way.
Best Craft
A Pint of Bitter (Animation) – dir. Conor Kehelly
You go for a simple pint, sipping down that sweet nectar, when a peevish punter takes issue with the cut of your jib. From the perspective of a pint glass, a minor argument becomes a cosmic destruction of the self and a reckoning with the towering figure of the ‘old Irish fella’ in Irish culture.