In Cardiff preparations are concluding for this year’s Iris Prize Festival, the world’s largest LGBT Short Film prize, which runs from October 8th-12th. The year the festival is expanding this year with Jury members increasing from 10 to 30 – presenting 6 awards including the new Best British Short sponsored by Pinewood Studios and the Iris Prize sponsored by the Michael Bishop Foundation.
The number of feature length movies presented over the course of the fest is also doubling to 16.
Festival Chair Andrew Pierce comments, “I always think of Iris as family. Granted a rather bigger family today than we knew back in 2007 when the world’s finest LGBT filmmakers gathered in Cardiff for the first time. We had 7 feature films as part of our inaugural programme, this year we have 16. In 2007 we had 5 programmes of short films, this year we have 10. There is no denying that our family is getting bigger.”
Film directors, producers, writers and actors from all four corners of the globe will be attending the five day festival in Cardiff. Former International model Hen Yanni, will be introducing the screening of Melting Away, for which she received many awards for her portrayal of a Trans person in Israel’s first feature film to deal with a Trans story. Cheryl Dunye is shortlisted for the first time for her short film Black Is Blue and travels from the US to attend the screening.
European films are well represented with seven making the programme including the German offering, The Samurai by former Iris Prize winner Till Kleinert. Following its sell-out screenings at FrightFest, the annual London horror festival, Total Film commented, “The Samurai is one of the most daring and stylish films we’ve caught at FrightFest.” Till Kleinert and his lead actor Michel Diercks will be in Cardiff for the screenings.
As a counterbalance to the horror the festival organisers are delighted to be screening The Way He Looks by another Iris Prize winner, Daniel Ribiero from Brazil, who will be attending the screening in Cardiff. The film is a feature length version of his popular 2011 Iris Prize winning short about a blind boy who falls in love with the new boy in class. The screening in Cardiff follows the London Film Festival premiere, proving the film has mainstream cross-over appeal.
“The Iris family is growing and this year we will have 4 previous winners join us in Cardiff. Till from Germany and Daniel from Brazil return with new feature films as they dominate the world film festival circuit. We also have the company of Tim Marshall, our winner from 2013 who has just finished filming Followers, his new Iris Prize funded short film. And if that was not enough we are also delighted to welcome back Eldar Rapaport (Iris Prize winner 2009) who will chair the Best Feature Film Jury,” added Andrew Pierce.
The 2014 Festival will have 5 independent juries – presenting 6 awards (listed below). The 10 strong Iris Prize jury is chaired by Sara Sugarman, who attends the festival for the first time. The jury members are all individuals who are at the top of their game and have generously given their time to support Iris.
The on-line box office is open and there is still time to organise your trip to Cardiff to experience what everybody is talking about! http://irisprize.ticketsource.co.uk/
The full programme can be found here: WWW.IRISPRIZE.ORG
Take a look below at a montage of this years Iris Prize nominated movies:
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