Low-budget short wins Shine award

The NMPFT has announced Benjamin Diez as this year's winner of the Shine Award for Best International Short Film, presented by British filmmaker Julian Richards on the closing night of the Bradford Film Festival.
The jury, chaired by Gareth Evans (Film Critic for Time Out), Ann Tobin (script development consultant), John Wojowski (Director, Kinofilm) and Simon Young (Head of Acquisitions and Sales, Britshorts) considered short films from Germany, Russia, Slovakia and Spain.
After deliberation, Benjamin Diez's eight-minute film, ‘Druckbolzen’ (Pressure Bolt) was awarded the prize due to its 'technical innovation'.
The film is set inside a huge and grim factory building, where human beings are working to their own destruction in a repetitive operating cycle. We follow the steps of the hero and witness this merciless system where ‘abnegators’ are eliminated and the human being is moulded into the cog of the gigantic machinery.
It was made during Benjamin's first year of Film School in Germany on a shoestring budget of 150 Euro.
The Shine Award aims to encourage the innovative, original and creative in short film, looking for new thinking and approaches that keep a familiar medium vital and fresh.
(GB)