On January 18th, 2012 Traffic will host the first Future Shorts Film Festival in the UAE. The one-night only festival will run alongside Traffic’s ‘Market of Everything’ (Jan 12 – 21), which brings together members of the community looking to buy, sell, trade or donate anything from furniture, books, music, art, clothes, toys, cars, pets and more.

Since 2003, Future Shorts’ defining quarterly format showcases a single programme of original, award-winning short films from around the world often alongside live music, DJs and art. Currently taking place in over 50 cities and 17 countries, from London to Moscow, Melbourne to Jakarta, the screenings take place across a huge network of music halls, cinemas, theatres, galleries, clubs and warehouses, providing an alternative to the traditional film festival model.

The current Future Shorts quarterly format, screening worldwide from November 1st 2011 to January 31st 2012, includes the Oscar-winner “God of Love”, BAFTA-winning “The Eagleman Stag” and Sundance-winner “Deeper Than Yesterday.”

Quarterly Programme (November 1st 2011 – January 31st 2012)

The Eagleman Stag – Dir: Michael Please / UK / 2010

The Eagleman Stag is a unique 9-minute stop-motion animated film that depicts a man’s haunting obsession with the passage of time and his unorthodox relationship with a beetle. Directed by Michael Please, the production was a highly ambition final year film produced while studying at the RCA – it is based on a story he previously wrote entitled “The Life and Time of Peter Eagleman.” Orchestral music was integral to this film and composed in tandem with the animation process.

Winner of Best Short Animation at BAFTA, and Special Jury Prize at SXSW.
View trailer here: http://vimeo.com/13394577

God of Love – Dir: Luke Matheny / US / 2010

Matheny, who wrote, directed and starred in this 19-minute inventive comedy about love-inducing darts won the Oscar for Best Live Action Short in 2011. A recent film student graduate at New York University, God of Love was produced as his thesis film project while enrolled at NYU’s MFA program. At the Oscars, he was hailed as delivering one of the best acceptance speeches of the evening and thanked his mother for her contribution to the movie.

Oscar Winner in 2011 for Best Live Action Short Film.
View trailer here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MlQsnMsq_RI

Deeper than Yesterday – Dir: Ariel Kleinman / Australia / 2010

Filmed on an old decommissioned military submarine with 35mm cameras, Deeper Than Yesterday tells the story of a Russian crew who suffer a rather savage form of cabin fever. Directed by Ariel Kleiman, a graduate of the VCA at the University of Melbourne, recently said “The more uncomfortable I feel making a film the better it will be.” Jurors have compared the film to “The Lower Depths,” Maxim Gorky’s best-known play – very Russian with long period of isolation and madness.

Winner of International Short Filmmaking Award at Sundance.
View trailer here: http://www.deeperthanyesterday.com/

Incident By A Bank – Dir: Ruben Ostlund / Sweden / 2009

A detailed and humorous account of a failed bank robbery: A single take where roughly 100 people meticulously recreate an actual event that took place in Stockholm in June 2006. Directed by Ruben Östlund, these events were witnessed first hand along with his producer Erik Hemmendorff while on the way to the Swedish Film Insititute. The film questions the reality of how, really, robberies happen, and what they might or, should, look like. “Making ‘Incident by a Bank’ is a way to correct the false images of robberies we see almost daily in action movies made in Hollywood,” says Östlund.

Winner of the Golden Bear at Berlinale.

The External World - Dir: David O’Reilly / Germany, Iceland / 2010

A boy learns to play the piano in this rather dark but occasionally humorous mediation on the anxieties and fears of a modern civilized society. Created as a lo-fi animation, The External World is a surreal seventeen-minute collection of vignettes which borrows themes from pop culture, cinema and videogames – classic and contemporary. Some have heralded this short as “a unique reconstruction of the universe” while O’Reilly recently noted in an interview, “I like creating experimental films that have an emotional function.”

Luminaris – Dir: Juan Pablo Zaramella / Argentina / 2011

Inspired by the Argentinian instrumental tango piece entitled “Lluvia de Estrellas” (Star Rain), Luminaris tells the story of a man living in a world controlled by time by light. Each day inhabitants of this fictional world awake and are pulled, as if by some otherworldly force, to their jobs by sunlight. Combining pixilation and stop motion techniques; the surrealist short pairs styles reminiscent of art deco with black cinema. Zaramella explains, "Originally, I approached the project as a puppet animation story, but doing some pixilation tests in the gardens of Fontevraud, just for fun, the seed of the present short was born: the idea of sunlight as a magnetic force.”

Winner of the Audience and Fipresci Award at Annecy 2011 International Animation Festival

For more information on the full programme as well as images, go to

www.futureshorts.com/festival