On Might 30, 2022 the 19th edition of the Vienna Shorts Film Festival came to an finish with prizes, flowers and champagne for the fortunate winners at Stadtkino. Austrian director Mo Harawe celebrated a triumph, getting not only the Austrian Brief Film Award for his haunting film Will My Parents Come to See Me, but also qualifications for the ACADEMY AWARD®, the European Film Award and the Austrian Film Award. The major prizes in the two international competitions went to the Qatari film And Then They Burn the Sea and the Japanese animation Bird in the Peninsula. Double honored with the new Social Duty Award and the ORF.at Audience Award was the essay Invisible Hands by Lia Sudermann and Simon Nagy. The awards in detail:
FIDO FICTION & DOCUMENTARY
The most important prize in the Fiction & Documentary International Competitors went to the quite private film And Then They Burn the Sea in which Majid Al-Remaihi, according to the jury, “beautifully blends household archives with reenacted dreams”. The Jury Prize was awarded to Goodbye Jerome!, the surreal and colorful French animated film by Chloé Farr, Gabrielle Seinet and Adam Sillard which convinced the jury “with its irresistible charm”. Each films have been also entered into the race for the ACADEMY AWARDS®. An Honorable Mention went to Jay Rosenblatt for his “intimately relatable record of a father–daughter relationship”, How Do You Measure A Year?.
AA ANIMATION AVANTGARDE
In the Animation Avantgarde International Competitors, Bird in the Peninsula, a “meditative journey complete of uncanny rituals and interrupted fantasies” by Atsushi Wada, was awarded Very best Film. The Jury Prize also went to an animation, the humorous doomsday spectacle Doom Cruise by Hannah Stragholz and Simon Steinhorst. An Honorable Mention went to Not possible figures and other stories I by Marta Pajek.
ÖW AUSTRIAN Competitors
In the Austrian Competitors, Mo Harawe’s film Will My Parents Come to See Me won the Austrian Brief Film Award as nicely as qualifications for the ACADEMY AWARD®, the European Film Award and the Austrian Film Award. Harawe returned to his native Somalia for the drama about a young man who meets a policewoman shortly ahead of execution and, according to the jury, designed “a formidable miniature about a nation scarred by violence that sticks in our memory.” The Jury Prize was awarded to the touching animation In The Upper Space by Alexander Gratzer, though Hollywood by Leni Gruber and Alex Reinberg received an Honorable Mention and Breeze by Anna Lehner scored the Youth Jury Prize. The ORF.at Audience Award for films beneath twelve minutes went to Invisible Hands by Lia Sudermann and Simon Nagy.
MUVI AUSTRIAN MUSIC VIDEO AWARD
On Friday, Viennese director Matthew Gerges, representing the collective FLOORISLAVA, picked up the Austrian Music Video Award for the music video for Make Me Cry by On Bells. The jury appreciated the way the video with the ambiguous title softens the “boundaries amongst the intimate and the obscene.” Nenda Neururer aka NENDA received an Honorable Mention for her self-directed music video for Borders, in “which several layers of which means converge in a homogenous style, political and urgent, unafraid to contact injustice by its name.” 
Unique AWARDS
The Chinese initial-time filmmaker Zou Jing was awarded the Elfi Dassanowsky Prize as the greatest female director of the festival for her drama Lili Alone. The Social Duty Award, newly donated by the Vienna Chamber of Labour, was offered to Invisible Hands by Lia Sudermann and Simon Nagy. In their essay, the filmmakers made use of amateur footage from the 1960s and present off-camera commentary to highlight the lack of appreciation for care function.