The winners of the Short Film Awards at the Melbourne International Film Festival 2021 (MIFF) were announced last night in a virtual ceremony hosted on MIFF Play. They are an international bunch, with even the winner of Best Australian Short Film, Brietta Hague’s Baltasar, shot and set in Barcelona as a Spanish-Australian co-production.
Next week, we will bring you an interview with Brietta Hague, who is an experienced, internationally-minded journalist and filmmaker who has been mentored by Werner Herzog, and cites his boldness as an inspiration. Hague is perhaps best known in film circles as a producer of Brooke Goldfinch’s stunning ‘end times’ Screen Australia-supported short film Red Rover (2015). For now, we report that the Sydney-based Hague, a 2021 MIFF Accelerator participant, is ‘thrilled’ to win the $11,000 prize, and says that the ambitious and sensitively performed 20-minute drama grew out of her work as an Al Jazeera correspondent in Spain, researching the plight of undocumented Senegalese migrants.
