South West Short Film Wins At IFFR

A short film from the South West has won the New Arrivals jury award at the 40th International Film Festival Rotterdam.
Silent Things by Bournemouth Film School graduate, Rob Brown, was funded by South West Screen's Digital Shorts programme. It was the only UK short to win an award at the festival, with other awards going to Belgium, USA, India and Italy.
Silent Things is a drama about how the friendship between an autistic man and woman is tested when an impulsive teenage girl comes between them.
The 12-minute short film was shot on location on the South Coast in late 2009 and features a strong cast, including Georgia Groome (star of London to brighton and Angus, Thongs and Perfect Snogging), Antonia Campbell-Hughes (Bright Star) and Andrew Scott (Olivier award winner, Moriarty in BBC's Sherlock). The film was cast by feature film casting director Chloe Emmerson whose previous credits include award-winning features films Pure and Last Resort.
This is the latest award to grace the mantelpiece of writer/director Rob Brown, who has twice won the BBC Big Screen Awards, been selected for the prestigious Berlinale Talent Campus and the Edinburgh Film Festival Trailblazers programme and was tipped last year as one to watch in Broadcast magazine's Hot Shots 2010.
As part of the International Film Festival Rotterdam, the New Arrivals initiative is an online competition, which has been attracting entries from all around the world since January 2006. For seven month each year, the editors make a selection of short films and a jury chooses the monthly winner. These monthly winners get a special screening at the IFFR and the New Arrivals Jury awards one film with a prize of 1,000 euros.
This year's festival jury were impressed by the film's handling of the delicate story, commenting: "Our preference went to a film that attempts to show and embrace the limitations of an anti-hero and because of the simple silent connection and the resulting emotional impact."
Sarah-Jane Meredith, Head of Creative and Audience Development at South West Screen, oversaw the selection process that saw Silent Things qualify for Digital Shorts funding. She said: "We're thrilled to see this award for Rob's film. We selected Silent Things on the potential development of two strong characters making sense of their world around them. We were also impressed by the cinematic potential of the way the story was presented and the use of the environment in telling the story. This award is well-deserved and we wish Rob all the best with his future endeavours."
(KMcA)