03/12/2013 - The festival, which runs alongside the Black Nights Film Festival, has rewarded short films Money Back Please, The Mass of Men and Mystery

The Sleepwalkers Student and Short Film Festival, which took place in Tallinn as a parallel programme to the Black Nights Film Festival (November 15 – December 1), has given out its awards to films from Norway, the UK, Spain and Estonia. While its big brother focuses on feature films (and has given prizes to movies the likes of Paolo Sorrentino’s The Great Beauty [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Paolo Sorrentino
film profile], Tsai Ming-Liang’s Stray Dogs [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile] or Benedikt Erlingsson’s Of Horses and Men [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Benedikt Erlingsson
film profile] – news), this event is dedicated to celebrate short films, as well as films made by film students.

Norwegian filmmaker Even Hafnor’s Money Back Please took home the two most important prizes, the Grand Prix (awarded by the audience) and Baltic Sea Competition Award (consisting on an €1,000 prize). The film, described as a story about choosing between what is right and what is easy, is, according to the decision of the jury, “a brilliant depiction of an error in the system, shattering the foundations of society.”

The Grand Prix was selected out of four films chosen by the juries of each competition section in order to be submitted to the vote of the audience. Those films were Spanish filmmaker Chema García Ibarra’s Mystery, Estonian filmmakers Maria Reinup’s Mai and Liis Leppik’s The Fourth One, and the aforementioned winner.

Mystery’s humorously surreal affair went on to win the Sleepwalkers International Competition, carrying home a €1,000 prize, while British director Gabriel Gauchet’s The Mass of Men – a story of desperation and bureaucracy which was honoured notably in Locarno and Tampere – grabbed the €1,000 award of the International Student Competition. On the other hand, the local competition crowned Katrin Maimik & Jan Erik Nõgisto’s The Photo.

The European Film Academy Short Matters! Programme was also screened at the festival, and its new edition will be held next year as part of the Black Nights Film Festival.