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.
The beauty of The Game is taking something so common it’s almost mundane: a completely random football match between two teams you don’t know, let alone care about, and literally shifting the lens to focus on something we very rarely see – the referee. Through this simple, yet brilliant, conceit, we watch as the referee controls the flow of the game, manages his officials, and responds to the pressure and outrage of fans in the crowd, as well as the players. The Game not only gives us an intimate insight into the daily intensity of being a referee, but also lets us see things from their perspective: the control, the doubt and the commitment.
