Winner of Best Australian Short Documentary, 2015:

MARATUS

Directed by Simon Cunich | Australia | 2015 | 30 min

A garbage collector takes a photo of a tiny colourful spider and posts it online. Scientists tell him it could be an unknown species. All he has to do is find it again. There follows an epic three-year search that transforms his life.

 

At Midnight

Amber McBride | Australia | 2015 | 4 min

Maria escaped from Communist Hungary seeking creative freedom, but her husband could not tear himself away from his successful film-making career to go. 57 years later, this film tells her version of the story.

 

Bassam

Ramy Daniel | Australia | 2015 | 7 min

Bassam Jabbar is a refugee artist struggling through life, while sick with multiple conditions and trying to keep up his great paint artworks. (Pictured)

 

Doing Time

Zanny Begg | Australia | 2015 | 9 min

Doing Time was developed in collaboration with four teenage boys in Reiby Juvenile Detention Centre. Presenting a series of discontinuous and dreamlike sequences, the film seeks to highlight the subjective and relative nature of time.

 

The Drover’s Boy

Margaret McHugh | Australia | 2014 | 11 min

This hybrid documentary based on a ballad by Australian bush legend Ted Egan retells the story of a forbidden love between a white drover and his Aboriginal wife in 1920s outback Australia.

 

The Face of Ukraine: Casting Oksana Baiul

Kitty Green | Australia | 2015 | 8 min

Adorned in pink sequins, little girls from across a divided, war-torn Ukraine audition to play the role of gold medal-winning figure skater Oksana Baiul, whose tears of joy once united their troubled country.

 

Girls

Kate Blackmore | Australia | 2015 | 19 min

Girls is a portrait of four fourteen year old girls growing up in Claymore, a place described as “the most disadvantaged community in Australia” due to its high rates of crime, alcohol and drug abuse.

 

I’m Coming Home

Teresa Carante | Australia | 2015 | 7 min

A poetic short documentary inspired by the sinking of the South Korean MV Sewol ferry in April 2014. The director’s family went through a similar ordeal, losing their first child in a drowning accident.

 

King of the Forest

Nicole Precel | Australia | 2015 | 8 min

In an undisclosed location deep within an Australian forest, Noddy has been living off the grid for 15 years. Now in his 70s, Noddy shares his unique life with us as he shows us around his home affectionately called Placebo Park and discusses life, love, and loneliness.

 

Kirrendirri (Lost and Alone)

Directed by Tom Hearn | Australia | 2015 | 15 min

In the late 1800’s murder and mayhem ruled in frontier Australia. On a property called Bladensburg, several hundred locals were murdered. The place is now called Skull Hole. Joslin and Pearl Eatts share their ancestors’ story.

 

L’Artigiano

Sam Zubrycki | Australia | 2015 | 7 min

Antonio Intili, a veteran tailor who is originally from Italy, shares his experiences on life, love, and work.

 

Smut Hounds

Sari Braithwaite | Australia | 2015 | 8 min

Film legend David Stratton recounts his battles with the prudish Australian censors to screen the Swedish film I Love, You Love at the 1969 Sydney Film Festival.

 

Travelling Man

Todd Miller | Australia | 2015 | 20 min

What do we know about our parents’ lives? A personal story about losing someone, and getting to know them better through the things they left behind.

 

Wang Wen-Chih: Woven Sky

Emma Hudson | Australia | 2014 | 16 min

After being told it was impossible to weave bamboo beyond the scale of a basket, Taiwanese artist Wang Wen-Chih has spent a lifetime perfecting his breathtaking large-scale woven technique.