PENTACLUB [The Club of Five] is a very well done short film by Roberto Strazzarino

The story is set in 1968. Five teenage boys dream of running a movie theater in which they will not show pro-war films. 
One summer afternoon Giò, Delfo, Max, Ricky and Paolo learn to become trusted friends, indispensable to one another. 
A coming-of-age, adventure film about friendship, one with small but large rebellious acts that signal the end of childhood and the beginning of adulthood.

The first line of the short film, which serves as its focal point, is this crucial quote:

“A dream you dream alone is only a dream
A dream you dream together is reality”
Yoko ono

A deep and genuine friendship that is unique to the type of relationships experienced by teenagers is the subject of the story portrayed through the frames. It shows young boys trying to work together to tackle various difficulties in a community in Northern Italy.

The sophisticated and vibrant cinematography by Alessandro Mattiolo reflects the camaraderie of the youngsters portrayed in the film. It also brings back memories of a particular flavor from the 1960s, when the movie is set. Marisa Garbero's outfits effectively capture the tone of the era on the skin of the figures.

The director made a wise choice in selecting the ensemble of performers, and the teenage actors' portrayals of the 1960s are accurate. It's enjoyable to watch a movie about a group of young people who wanted to open a theater at a time when movie theaters are set to close due to people's preference for watching movies on couches.

Airam Maria Tomaselli's sound design and soundtrack are in keeping with the way the director consistently captures the mood of the 1960s. The boys' adventure story is further supported by the sound design.

Roberto Strazzarino selected this remarkable cast.

Roberto Strazzarino was born in Italy and is 69 years old. His parents worked at the Italian film studio "Ferrania" and has been a self-taught filmmaker since the days of 8mm. His growth as a filmmaker, which began in the darkness of 1960s cinemas, was crucial.

The proximity of the film factory prompted his urge to try his hand at filmmaking, and the usage of an 8mm camera aided in familiarizing himself with the medium.

His love of movies remained with him throughout his life, thanks in part to his presence at the Venice movies Festival as a correspondent for private radio stations and specialist magazines since 1979, the year the festival relaunched under Carlo Lizzani.

He has dedicated himself full-time to his passion of filmmaking since his retirement. He studied film at both the Sentieri Selvaggi School in Rome and the Holden School in Turin. He enrolled at New York University's Tisch School of the Arts in 2019 to study "Sight and Sound Filmmaking."

PENTACLUB [The Club of Five] was named Best First-Time Director in the August 2023 Monthly Competition at the Berlin Indie Film Festival. 

ONLINE by Bianka Bereczky is a very elegant drama film.

It portrays the story of a small-town high school teacher who clashes with her reluctant pupil during online sessions. The child spoils the classes and humiliates the single teacher. The student's parents are not accessible. The student's dismissal is out of the question, according to the headmaster. The instructor must find a solution on her own: she chooses to visit the boy and talk reason into him, but when she arrives at his home, she finds a different reality than she expected.

The screenplay, written by Viktoria Janoki-Kis, who is also the producer, is quite clever in creating two very tough female characters: the teacher and the mother of the "bad" youngster. Even when placed in a harsh scenario, the characters presented are authentic and credible, and as women, they have opposing features. The manner in which they are recounted displays a tremendous understanding of the female soul.


Marta Szabo and Judit Cseh are two wonderful and powerful actresses capable of playing these two complex and strong characters. The director's direction of the actors is very precise and impeccable for both.

To express the emotional sense told in the film, Gabor Szabo's photography is dominated by a blue and grey palette. The camera movements are carefully designed to create a precise image that can explain the story without the use of dialogue.

It is interesting how the director also decides to convey the initial feeling that every day is similar by using the repetition of the same gestures of the main character and the same camera shots.

The editing pace is outstanding in creating the story's climax. Finally, Arthur Valentin Grosz's music creates a really Nordic vibe.
For these reasons, Online was named Best Student Film in the August 2023 Monthly Competition.

Max Fritzsching is a German actor, musician, and filmmaker who was born on August 23, 1988 in Berlin. He discovered his interest for artistic work at an early age after landing a part as an actor in a television series. He studied and graduated from the Schauspielschule Charlottenburg after studying at the Sae Institute in Berlin.
Chari Krause is a German director and screenwriter who was born on June 5, 1980 in Recklinghausen.
Jane's life is the subject of the short film. Every day feels the same and her life in a big city is monotonous. One day she comes home to a mysterious note on her doorstep, which jolts her out of the monotony of her routine and sends her on an unexpectedly emotional journey.
One of the film's strongest points is its total lack of dialogue. The directors are able to convey a very deep and immersive experience in the psychology of the main character in a visual narrative world composed of images and actions.
The directors used the repetition of actions as a very clever tool to create a strong sense of monotony and emptiness about Jane's life.
The main character, played by Nadine Klein, is very intense and minimalist in her acting, always believable in a world that becomes frame after frame full of signs she does not understand until the end of the film. Her actions become more energetic as her life evolves from its beginning.
The short film concludes with a traditional narrative switch.
The sound design is consistent with the inner journey of the mai character, and the editing really helps to convey her growing sense of loss.
The cinematography by Frederik Baumert is extremely refined, maintaining a desaturated palette of white and grey until the main character's life drastically changes.
Even if the short film was made on a shoestring budget, we cannot infer that.
With Love L. was a selection in the August 2023 Berlin Independent Film Festival.

THE SULINGEN-PROJECT is a documentary directed by Martin Hermann and Frank Wenker. The documentary takes viewers on an exciting journey through the long-forgotten days of a small town in northern Germany. 1000 years of life, human destinies, successes, and setbacks bring local history to life.
This film's style is based on a mingling of interviews, archive footage, fiction, and photographs.  The historical reconstruction is very detailed and well done, requiring a massive amount of equipment, costumes, and props. They have succeeded in taking us on a journey through our hometown's over a thousand-year history, which no community of comparable size can easily replicate. 
Since the project's inception in 2016, there have been 23 days of shooting and 350 extras to recreate special events from Sulingen's 1,000-year history. The team of five main leaders, led by Werner Focke, Christine Nordenholz, and Kerstin Melloh-Kordes, conducted 35 interviews with contemporary witnesses and historians. Valuable interviews - some of the main characters have already passed away.
The editing's rhythm and the documentary's excellent cinematography both greatly aid in holding viewers' interest throughout.  The movie's emotional moments are strongly highlighted by the music and sound design.  The reconstruction scenes feature genuinely well-directed actors. 
A detailed narrative line has been developed by Martin Hermann, Kerstin Melloh-Kordes, Knut Teske and Frank Wenker.
Werner Focke, Kerstin Melloh-Kordes, and Christine Nordenholz produced it, and despite having a modest budget for a project of this complexity, the documentary didn't suffer from this limitation. 
These factors led to THE SULINGEN-PROJECT winning the Best Historical May Monthly Competition at the 2023 Berlin Indie Film Festival. 

LITTLE YELLOW FLOWER is an experimental art house short film directed by Mr. Lin Chien-Ping.In the short film a Photo Retoucher A-nan returns to the old house that saddens him. The eerily beautiful yellow flowers on the loofah trellis attract a whole nest of ants. As a child, A-nan accidentally killed all these yellow flowers when spraying insecticide on them to kill the ants. In a rage, his father beat him lame. This caused a lifelong conflict between them. The elderly and paralyzed father, now wrapped in diapers and covered with ants, evokes the painful memories of A-nan’s youth. A-nan sprays and kills the ants again. But how will A-nan unravel this knotted relationship with his father, entangled for so many years? How will he restore the loving beauty of the yellow flowers that once bloomed in the courtyard?

The short film introduces us to this world starting from the details and details will remain the most important expressive pictures all along the narrative.
We are introduced to the house of the main character where the father is lying on the bed unable to move.
Here starts the alternation between present and past and tells how the past strongly impress the present of the characters. Even introducing many poetic and metaphorical elements in the story telling, the relationship between father and son seems very authentic, full of tension and vivid.
The father played by Ming-Siou Tsai and the son played by Huai-Zhong Wang are really well directed by the director in this metaphorical picture.
An excellent aspect of the film is the cinematography signed by Chien_ping Lin. It is very elegant and refined. Shadows are important as light and the aesthetic is full of contrast. There is also a between to strong images: the “contrast between the aesthetics of vibrant little yellow flowers with the ugliness of the desolate terrain that establishes both an external environmental conflict and an internal conflict of love and hatred between father and son” as the director remark.

The choice of the director to shot in 4:3 conveys a strong sense of claustrofobia in going back in this relationship.
The rhythm of the editing is very slow and allows us to emphasize with the inner journey of the characters. Sound design convey also a strong sense of pain inside their mind.
There are just few words in this very well done short film because images are so strong that they don’t need any addiction.

The short film LITTLE YELLOW FLOWER is directed by Mr. Lin Chien-Ping, Taiwanese Film Director, Graduating from the Film Department of the School of Visual Arts, New York. His persisting on film art, has a unique personal creative style. The works have delicate emotions and use the correspondence between pictures and sounds to explore the inner world of the characters. In 2005, his short film "Small Station" won the Silver Lion Award for Best Short Film at the 62nd Venice Film Festival. won as Best Artist Film the February ’22 Berlin Indie Film Festival Monthly Competition.
LITTLE YELLOW FLOWER won as Best Artist Film the February ’22 Berlin Indie Film Festival Monthly Competition. Congratulation to all cast and crew!  

“When Worlds Collide” is a short documentary directed by Genevieve Sulway.
It's about an incident involving a group of triathletes that made national and international headlines.
The documentary alternates between interviews with relatives of those involved in the accident, archive footage of them, and contemporary footage depicting the landscape of Spain, where accidents caused by drug or alcohol abuse are common.
A very good point of the documentary, in this regard, is the cinematography, signed by Joan Gili Prohens, which is very refined and effective in the choice of shot to tell about this sad story. Jaume Faraig's sound signature is also very effective and delicate in underlining emotional moments and following the story telling.
Another strong point is the editing, as Genevieve Sulway, the film's director and producer, is able to strike a good balance between the pain of the story and the resilience of the victims' families. As the director says: “From tragedy, life will and can continue.
Laws can be changed so this situation doesn’t happen again.”
This is Genevieve Sulway's first time directing,  but we cannot infer it at all. The same can be said about the film's low budget. Genevieve Sulway studied acting with Hugh Jackman at WAAPA, which is ranked as one of the top 30 Drama Schools in the world. She went on to appear in commercials, films and TV shows such as Home & Away over the next 10 years. A lateral move into the corporate world saw her living and working in China, Singapore, the U.S and Europe. She returned to the film industry in 2018 graduating with a Masters in Film & TV Producing.
Genevieve founded Salty Paradise Productions and is now based in London, UK. With an innate ability to speak to people, her emotionally compelling storytelling style is the hallmark of her films. She gains unfettered and intimate access to the stories that she captures on film. Her documentaries focus on the underdog experience, underrepresented communities and the power of community spirit overcoming adversity.
The first film she made at 50 was the Spanish documentary “When Worlds Collide”, followed by the Hawaiian film “I am Kanaka (2022) with a third documentary focused on the stories behind the UK bodybuilding industry
“Mind Over Muscle – Becoming Big Granty” (2023) due to launch in the 2023 International Film Festival season. She’s also been employed as a development producer at Chalkboard TV in London and pitched projects to Channel 5 and BBC.
WHEN WORLDS COLLIDE was named Best Director Short Documentary and Best First Time Documentary Director in the April 2023 Berlin Indie Film Festival Monthly competition.
Congratulations to the entire cast and crew!