BERLIN: With a value of 20,000 euros, the Audi Short Film Award at the 70th Berlin International Film Festival goes to “Genius Loci” by Adrien Mérigeau.
This year’s international short film jury is made up of the Hungarian animation film maker Réka Bucsi, the Turkish curator Fatma Çolakoglu and the film maker Lemohang Jeremiah Mosese from Lesotho.
The jury’s statement on this year’s award winner: “That other night her thoughts merged with the flickering street lights, the skyline and the trash on the sidewalks. This beautifully crafted film effortlessly coordinates the chaos of being human.”
In “Genius Loci“ Reine, a young loner, wanders around the city at night. There is chaos everywhere: in her head and outside, in the big city. Things are taking on a life of their own. Young Reine is on the search, but she does not know what she is looking for. In delicate drawings and fluid animations, we see the world through her eyes and her perception becomes tangible.
After studying at the French animation school EMCA, Mérigeau went to the Irish animation studio Cartoon Saloon to work on two Oscar-nominated feature films.
“Genius Loci” is the director’s second short film. "It was important for me to work on paper, since traditional drawing, unlike digital, requires concentration and a meditative approach in one’s gestures”, says Mérigeau when asked about the working process on “Genius Loci”. “
It helps me maintain a direct, affective connection with the element I’m drawing."
To mark the 70th anniversary of the Berlinale and its seventh season as a principal sponsor, Audi celebrated the diversity of artistic positions and open discourses together with trendsetting talents and international film greats such as Helen Mirren, Margaret Qualley, Johnny Depp and Salma Hayek.
The purely electrical drives to the red carpet with the Audi e-tron and the two new plug-in-hybrid models Audi A8 TFSI e and A7 Sportback TFSI e ensured that the stars of the international film industry made an exciting appearance.
The new Audi e-tron Sportback opened the red carpet of the Berlin International Film Festival and used its new digital matrix LED headlights to project a video clip onto a screen as an act of homage to mark the 70th anniversary.
