Synopsis

The adolescent Michael takes the train to his first date with a new girlfriend. Their flirting via SMS indicates great longing and anticipation. A timid hello, a silent walk through a lonely town, a shared ice cream, holding hands and the first kiss by the lake. This unburdened atmosphere is suddenly disturbed by a stranger, who obsessively follows Michael. What first seems like an adolescent joke in the summer heat, ends in a psychologically gruelling breakout of violence. The Heat takes its place in the short film tradition of pessimistic coming-of-age stories established in 2008 by Two Birds. A story about the end of childhood, the death of teen spirit.

The film will be presented within the frame of SHORT FILM COMPETITION 2 together with the following productions:

Maria’s Episode (Marijina epizoda)
SRB/CAN 2014 | 25 min.
Language: Serbian w. Engl. ST
Director: Sanja Živković
After having lived in exile for many years, Maria visits her grandmother in Serbia. However, the old woman confuses her granddaughter with a fictive character from her favourite soap opera. A touching family story between reality and TV fiction.

February
RUS 2014 | 26 min.
Language: Russian w. Engl. ST
Director: Ruslan Magomadov
Chechnya, February 1944. Thanks to an unsuccessful hunt after a wolf, two brothers escape the deportation of their entire village through the violence of the USSR. A gripping story about inhumanity and fraternal strife.

8 Months (8 Ay)
TUR/FRA 2013 | 20 min.
Language: Turkish w. Engl. ST
Director: Hüseyin Aydın Gürsoy
The weekly call of his son, who has to serve in the army for another eight months, determines an old man’s life. A touching story about war, far from any front.

Soft Rain (Lágy eső)
HUN/BEL 2013 | 29 min.
Language: Hungarian w. Engl. ST
Director: Dénes Nagy
The orphan Dani gets adopted by a pig farmer. He falls in love with his classmate, but is incapable of expressing his feelings for her. Acts of destruction of himself as well as of others take the place of empathy in his emotional repertoire.

Pandas (Pandy)
SVK/CZE 2013 | 11 min.
Director: Matúš Vizár
Based on the evolution of pandas, Matúš Vizár creates an animated reckoning, that is critical of civilisation. He reveals our perverted (mis)understanding of nature by showing how poorly humans treat it.

The Execution (A kivégzés)
HUN/ROU 2014 | 14 min.
Language: Romanian w. Engl. ST
Director: Petra Szőcs
“Playing Ceausescu” is common among the children of Cluj in 1990 – a game, which entails enacting a brutal execution. A precisely staged view onto a school yard as a place of subversive and direct violence.

Guests

Bartosz Kruhlik

Director The Heat