The short film “Tayal Forest Club” has won the International Jury Special Mention award at the 2025 Clermont-Ferrand International Short Film Festival, according to the Ministry of Culture.
During the 47th edition of the annual festival held at the French city from Jan. 31 to Feb. 8, the Taiwan short film was selected from 64 entries for the international award, an encouraging development that bodes well for local productions to compete for global recognition in the new year, the MOC said.
The film was directed by Laha Mebow, Taiwan’s first Indigenous female film director, who also won the 2022 Golden Horse Award, the highest honor for movies in Taiwan, for best director with “Gaga,” a comedy about a granddaughter returning from abroad.
The 18-minute short is the coming-of-age tale of two Indigenous youths as they take on a nightfall outing in the dense and mountainous Atayal homelands. Before they can find a way home, the pair must first learn lessons that the land has to offer.
In addition to the two protagonists’ relationship, ancestral spirits, dense forest and subtle climate changes in the mountainous Atayal tribal village create fascinating images on the big screen, the MOC said.
“The Fishbowl Girl,” a short film about lesbians directed by Wu Hung-yi, was shortlisted for the festival’s international competition, while “The Eye and I,” an experimental animation jointly produced by Huang Hsin-chien from Taiwan and Jean Michel Jarre from France, was also selected for screening at the XR Panorama.
Launched in 1979, the French festival is widely hailed as the leading events of its kind in the world, or the Oscars of short films. The 2025 edition involved 170,000 patrons and 4,000 filmmakers, with around 8,400 films from 50 countries and territories around the world taking part. (SFC-E)
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