Cup of tea? Come and take a seat in Lyn's cosy front room. Hear her story of love during wartime and watch as her belongings come alive with the hope, fear and humour of one spirited lady.

What’s the connection between the military dictatorship in Chile and the workers of a Rolls Royce manufacturing plant in Scotland? Here are the known facts: when the workers learn after the 1973 coup in Chile that the machine parts they make are used in the Chilean junta’s fighter planes, they refuse to deliver them. According to later Chilean reports, however, the machines were deployed after all. The workers doubt it. What’s their secret? Director Felipe Bustos Sierra reconstructs the events like a thriller, focusing on three former Scottish workers who meet again at a pre-arranged place. He confronts them with the known facts and uses animated sequences to interpret what happened on the grounds of the factory under cover of night and fog. Combined with archive material from the 1970s, a tongue-in-cheek portrait of a self-determined act of solidarity among workers emerges.

Lars Meyer

On 18th October, 2011, the sheriff of Zanesville, Ohio, got an agitated phone call: the animals that eccentric Terry Thompson was legally keeping on his ranch were roaming the county. Red alert! That night, a heavily armed police force killed more than 56 bears, tigers, wolves, leopards and lions. Thompson had opened the cages, shot himself and offered his body as food to the animals. So far, so good, so American.
British media artist Ramon Bloomberg has turned this bizarre incident into a Brechtian story. Bloomberg combines Brecht’s play “The Yes Sayer” about traditional custom and formalised law with the American settler’s anarchical logic of freedom which fights every kind of state influence as an infringement on individual freedom: I am the lord of my animals, my land, my house, my family. End of story!
Bloomberg translates epic theatre into the language of film in the age of Play Station games. Real live shots are combined with images from the police car’s video camera, Google Earth data mining sequences and computer animated re-enactments. We hear minutes and statements of everyone involved as well as a comment taking the form of an (antique) chorus, the voice of the law, the neighbour and the animal. The only voice we don’t hear is Terry Thompson’s. His motives remain a big secret.

Matthias Heeder

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Honorary Mention in the International Competition Animated Film 2014