Down Time

🎁 Putting a Bow on Cannes

• Cannes Winners! - The Short Film Palme d’Or goes to I’m Glad You’re Dead Now, Taweek Barhom’s Palestinian short about brothers and buried secrets. Paris distributor Short Cuts is handling sales. Ali, which we highlighted in the runup to the festival, receives a Special Mention.

• “This is for Palestine, and for Peace” - The winning Arab-Israeli director, Barhom, was quoted at the awards press conference with a call to “…stop this madness” in regards to the ongoing conflict between Israel and Palestine. Mashable Middle East has more.

• Interview with Shorts Jury President, Maren Ade - The celebrated producer, known for her work on films like Toni Erdmann, talked about the importance of shorts for the official Cannes website.

• Rundown of Feature Sales - For those looking for signs as to the general health of the film market, brisk sales at Cannes were a much-needed positive sign. Indiewire has the list of sales so far.

• Mubi’s Breakout - Neon garnered a lot of attention for its spray gun acquisition approach to securing North American distro for Palme winner for a sixth straight year. But, the biggest player at Cannes had to MUBI, which gobbled up high-profile rights left and right, including an eye-watering $24M deal for the latest film from UK auteur Lynne Ramsay. After a few years of playing in the artsy side of the arthouse pool, MUBI had a breakout last year at award shows and the box office with The Substance and that seems to have empowered the streaming platform to go big, with a recent profile in Variety documenting their strategy to become “cooler than A24”.

🔗 10 Things We’re Paying Attention To

1. Announcement and Trailer for Alcazar’s Bullet Time - We don’t often cover unpremiered shorts, but we’re rarely as intrigued as we are for the latest from Shorts Award-winner Eddie Alcazar (The Vandal). A hand-drawn pilot 4 years in the making, it utilizes artists from legendary 90s-era shows like Ren & Stimpy, and is being billed as a love-letter to hand-drawn animation at the moment we “turn towards the AI age.” The film will premiere this summer at Fantasia.

2. A24 Gets Out of Documentary Biz - Documentary is on a bad run in the wake of its recent golden age, with widespread funding cutbacks from governments, and the medium’s success on streaming becoming seen as pyrrhic, for how it oversaturated the market with formulaic work. Now, one outlet known for championing adventurous fare is gone as A24, which experienced critical and financial success with titles like Amy, is closing its doc division.

3. A Key Thunderbolts* Character’s Short Film Origin Story? - I haven’t seen Marvel’s latest yet, but TikTokers have been directing traffic to our upload of the 2020 short film The Voice In Your Head, calling it “literally the same plot as Thunderbolts*”. Both films star Lewis Pullman (who has a surprisingly great shorts filmography) and we don’t mind the attention as the short won “Short of Year” at our Short Awards and has our highest recommendation. 😎

4. Fancy new HQ for Clermont-Ferrand - Just last year, we were passing along news of potentially debilitating funding cuts for France’s revered Clermont-Ferrand Int’l Short Film Festival, so it’s nice to see Deadline report that the fest is getting a fancy new $13.5M building to showcase shorts. Dubbed La Jeteé in honor of the legendary Chris Marker film, work is scheduled to be done by 2029 to coincide with the fest’s 50th anniversary.

5. AI-Powered Interactive Video is Here - The VR hype cycle made way for AI, but many visionaries predict the eventual fusion of the two, as true Ready Player One virtual worlds will require real-time AI environments. We might have our first glimpse of that as a new company called Odyssey has debuts their tech. The Verge has details, and you can try it yourself for free at the company’s website.

6. Dates and Locations for Sundance’s Short Film Tour - Details are out for Sundance’s popular US theatrical roadshow. Featuring 7 shorts from this year’s festival, things kick off next week with 15 cities announced and more to surely come. Check out if a screening will be near you, or reach out to Lead Programmer Mike Plante to bring the show to your town.

7. Netflix Co-Founder Joins Board of Anthropic - A tech world appointment has turned heads in Hollywood as Netflix co-founder Reed Hastings has joined the board of the AI company responsible for the popular Claude family of models.

8. New Book Tackles the Impending AI Content Disruption - Doug Shapiro is one of the sharpest commentators on the intersection of technology and entertainment, and announced a new book called Infinite Content on his Substack. The free post includes the introductory chapter of the book, which lays out key questions he’ll dive into, including “If AI drives the cost of content creation toward zero, what will still be scarce and, for that reason, probably even more valuable?”, “To what degree will consumers embrace AI-generated or assisted media?” and “As GenAI democratizes the means of creation, will the distinction between creation and consumption increasingly blur?” New chapters will debut for paid subscribers of the blog, and the book is set to release in 2026 from MIT Press.

9. Sony Releases Animation Production Course - Sony Pictures Animation, responsible for groundbreaking animation films like the Spiderverse series, has partnered with the education platform Yellowbrick on a free course that “provides unprecedented access to the animation production process and demystifies one of the most creative and collaborative forms of storytelling in entertainment today.”

10. Weekend Watch - May has been a good month for short film alums at the megaplex, with Friendship and Dean Fleischer-Camp’s Lilo & Stitch remake garnering strong box office and audience scores. S/W alum Jonathan Entwistle hopes to keep that streak going with Karate Kid: Legends, the latest installment of the now 40-year-old franchise. I have a soft spot for the original, as my childhood sensei was the martial arts advisor for the film, but I haven’t kept up with the modern releases. Still, rooting for Entwistle, who came out to our last S/W London meetup. Check out the trailer below.

📅 This Week on Short of the Week