Nespresso Talents 2016: Vote for your favourite
Nespresso Talents 2016 shortlist has been announced and it’s up to you to take to Facebook or Twitter to choose the three films to be screened during Cannes
Back in March, Nespresso launched Nespresso Talents 2016, a contest asking you to ‘Explore your extraordinary.’ A gauntlet was thrown down to emerging filmmakers to ignore any preconceived notions that the cinema frame should be widescreen and instead think vertically. They were asked to embrace the natural portrait frame of the smartphone cameras we all carry around in our pockets and seek out a different kind of aesthetic using the 9:16 format. (Watch and share your favourite shortlisted films at the Nespresso Talents 2016 website for a chance to win a trip to the Cannes Film Festival 2016.)
The response was fantastic. Filmmakers spanning 41 countries, from the UK to Russia and as far away as Argentina, rose to Nespresso’s challenge, and all in different ways. “Some breaking new ground in vertical filmmaking,” says Nespresso, “while others bring a fresh perspective to familiar genres.”
From these entries, an international jury assembled a shortlist of the 20 most interesting and innovative films, and it’s down to you to decide which three filmmakers win €6000 and get the opportunity to take their film to Cannes for a special screening on 12 May during the Cannes Film Festival.
Remember: these filmmakers were asked to ‘Explore your extraordinary’. “We believe that your everyday moments can be transformed into something extraordinary,” say Nespresso. “These indefinable, incomparable and meaningful moments that add that little something, that uplift your everyday.” Which of these shortlisted three-minute gems moved you, made you laugh, thrilled you? And, more importantly, which of them offered a fresh perspective?
Explore the entire finalist shortlist and cast your vote at the Nespresso Talents website.
Below are six of our favourite entries
Bird Murderer (Evan Moore, USA)
Enter the overactive mind of Gary, a neurotic New Yorker with serious unresolved avian issues. In this delightful black and white comedy, the accidental death of a bird sends our hero into a tailspin of guilt and paranoia. The comedy doesn’t just come from the increasingly frantic voiceover, but Moore’s witty use of the 9:16 format. The simple act of making an egg sandwich – baguette, pickle spear, carton of eggs – with a highball glass of club soda to wash it down becomes a masterclass in vertical framing. It also has the best dead parrot joke since Monty Python.
Abyss of Tenderness (Valentin Hennig, Germany)
This tactile animation from Stuttgart-based filmmaker Valentin Hennig takes the form of a scrolling stop motion tableau. As the camera pulls us downwards we see an allegorical journey of humanity played out in Plasticine and cold cuts. This is creation and evolution, life and birth, all told in three minutes. There’s even a steamy sex scene where all you see is a shower hose and some hyperventilating coffee cups. As the camera scrolls down the vertical frame, we sink into the animation until we see the light at the end of the journey – or is it just the beginning?
Cavallo (Joana Maria Sousa, Portugal)
A horse walks into a bar, and the bartender asks, "Why the long face?" The 9:16 format is the best aspect ratio with which to capture a horse in close-up. It’s also the perfect form in which to muse on our blinkered society, as Portuguese filmmaker Joana Maria Sousa does here. “Vertical are the walls that we built with our own hands,” she says. “They are blinders and we are like horses, letting them blind us.” Beginning in the familiar mode of personal video diary, Cavallo spirals off into a Lynchian dreamscape that asks us to take our blinkers off. Like Ferris Bueller, she’s saying, “Life moves pretty fast. If you don't stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.”
Vertical Dreams (Flavio Florencio, Argentina)
“When you start to see the world in vertical, you realise you’ve only seen life’s torso, and never its head and feet.” Flavio Florencio’s beautiful and moving doc in miniature takes us to the Mexican border town of Tijuana, and uses the vertical frame to see the human beings trapped there, staring up at the imposing wall blocking them off from their dreams of a better life. Florencio’s film is both poetic and politically charged. Donald Trump’s right-wing rhetoric is juxtaposed by the human suffering caused by this cruel divide between prosperity and abject poverty. Florencio fills his film with hope, though. This barrier is surmountable, he says, “because dreams are vertical and this wall is horizontal.”
Together Ever After (Grigory Tatintsev, Russia)
This sharply-titled relationship study uses the 9:16 format brilliantly. The portrait style works best with a single subject, whether in close-up or capturing their full frame, but you’ll know from scrolling through Instagram and Facebook that happy couples work well in portraiture too. Close together and intertwined, they fit the space snuggly. Unhappy couples, not so much. Tatintsev’s witty film becomes like a Bergman movie in miniature, using the vertical frame as an apt and observant tool for chronicling a crumbling relationship.
An Ordinary Life (Lidia Sheinin, Russia)
We’re introduced to Lidia Sheinin’s ‘ordinary’ family, but they prove anything but. Sheinin’s study of everyday Russian life is really a paean to her 99-year-old grandmother, who had dreams of being a dancer but had to build a nuclear ice-breaker for Stalin instead – “which was common,” add Sheinin. This is a little gem, filled with inventive uses of the vertical frame and held together by a dryly sardonic narration. If Wes Anderson was ever to make a three minute documentary shot in the 9:16 format, it would probably look something like this.
How to cast your vote
Public voting is open on the Nespresso Talents website from 28 Apr-3 May 2016.
UK residents aged 18 or over can participate in the public vote to win a trip to Cannes in France on 12 and 13 May for two people including flights, accommodation and entertainment.
Entry into the prize draw will be automatic upon a participant sharing a video on Facebook or Twitter from the selection of videos from the Nespresso Talents Video Contest.