The work selected for this year’s Saatchi & Saatchi New Creators Showcase, formerly the Saatchi New Directors Showcase, was unveiled this morning (6/20) at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity. The pieces ranged from the relatively obscure to a short film nominated this year for a Best Live-Action Short Oscar. The latter, Fauve, was directed by Jeremy Comte who’s handled by Morrison Films for commercial representation in Canada and being managed for film and TV by Anonymous Content. He has seen Fauve play at more than 150 festivals and win in excess of 75 awards.
Andy Gulliman, New Creators Showcase executive producer, said, “Jeremy Comte’s film Fauve shows incredible maturity in his handling of this powerful story of two boys, both intimate and tense as he draws out a fantastic performance to create a powerful emotional cinematic film.”
Here’s the rest of the 2019 New Creators’ Showcase lineup:
- Claudia Barral for the film “__ /__ /__” (Places). Barral is handled in Spain by Blur Films.
- BRBR, a collective consisting of Luis Rojo, Michal Babinec, Clara Alonso, Nacho A. Villar and David Rancel. BRBR, whose Showcase entry is Heroes for DDB Spain, is repped by Madrid production house Garlic.
- Calmatic of production house PRETTYBIRD for Vince Staples’ music video “FUN!”
- Billy Boyd Cape for his Pride In London film piece Somewhere Over The Rainbow from agency BMB, London. Cape is with Academy Films, London.
- Winnie Cheung earned a place in the Showcase for Albatross Soup, an animated short hybrid documentary film based on trying to unravel a riddle. Cheung is a Hong Kong born, Queens raised, Brooklyn-based filmmaker.
- Cool 3D World consisting of Brian Tessler and Jon Baken for their 3D animation film Chefs.
- Ella Dobson, a motion designer and animator, and Margaret Cheatham Williams, producer for When Your Child’s Bogeyman is Real for The New York Times.
- Victor Haegelin for the film Patagraph. Known for his stop-motion animation, he is handled by Paris studio Wizz.
- Jun Ho for the film Eye Bags in which a protagonist coping with insomnia meets a goldfish who lives in her eye bags.
- Anna Mantzaris, a Swedish director and animator based in London and Stockholm. Her Showcase piece is Enough, which centers around impulses we all can feel but never act upon. Mantzaris is repped by Passion Animation Studios.
- Maya & Mati Kochavi, an Israel-based daughter and father filmmaking team who earned a Showcase slot for Eva Stories, conveying the plight of a Jewish teenager murdered by the Nazis in a concentration camp. We get to know her by imagining how she would have documented her final months over social media.
- Daniel McKee, a London-based filmmaker, whose “if you never answered x” got a thumbs-up from Saatchi Showcase judges.
- Nothing Lost for directing Big Tobz’ music video “WOKE,” which stands for “We’re Only Killing Each Other (WOKE). The clip reflects the song which deals with the consequences of escalating violence in our society.
- Dani Pearce, a Sydney-based filmmaker, who made the Showcase grade for Backpedal, a film based on a poem by Olivia Gatwood.
- Paco Raterta for The Prodigy’s “Timebomb Zone.” Raterta is with Pulse Films.
- Yoann Stehr for “À corps,” the title track from Corps’ 2018 album. The piece is a cut-out motion graphics trip into the retro 1970s. Stehr is handled by French production company Temple Cache.
- Director/animator Robert Strange for Everybody Wants To Be Famous.
- Thomas Webb for an untitled film. He recently joined Mill+ in London and his known for his immersive digital art.
- Erik Winkowski for Video Sketchbook, showcasing his animation techniques and experimental spirit. The New Orleans-based director is known for treating video like a collage, cutting up, painting over and remixing scenes from everyday life in playful ways.
To see the New Creators Showcase videos, click here.
Assessments
New Creators Showcase EP Gulliman assessed, “Out of the 20 directors, a few films showed the breadth of talent in this year’s showcase. Comedy, animation, cinematic performance and the intersection between technology and art all played a role.” In addition to his citing director Comte, Gulliman put forth director Calmatic for rapper Vince Staples “FUN!” video using Google Earth. The piece, said Gulliman, “showed how the director’s mind had transformed a functional piece of technology into a very human story.”
Gulliman also singled out Maya and Mati Kochavi for using Instagram perfectly in Eva Stories. “By using the platform, her historical diaries connect with the audience in a way that really touches emotions. The film has unbelievable authenticity.”
Furthermore, Gulliman cited Mantzaris for bringing “brilliant comic timing to her stripped back animation film, Enough, and Webb whose untitled film was described by Gulliman as “a great example of a creator who takes technologies and applies his unbelievable artistry to create powerful storytelling in the real world.”
Kate Stanners, chairwoman and global chief creative officer at Saatchi & Saatchi, said, “Today we have so many places in which to tell our stories. Social media platforms and mobile technology have given us an extraordinary set of tools to play with and audiences to share and reach. With technologists giving us ever more immersive opportunities the NCS (New Creators Showcase) captures all these different channels and highlights the significance of the context in which audiences now take on an active role to consume stories.”
Presentation
The Saatchi New Creators Showcase presentation drew more than 2,000 Cannes delegates to the Lumiere Theatre. The show lasted about an hour and presented the very best, groundbreaking directorial talent from across the globe. Working closely with Facebook, Google, Twitter and Instagram, the New Creators Showcase celebrated the very best in creativity, storytelling and innovation. Its aim is to provide a platform that rejoices up-and-coming talented creators.
The Showcase took a new direction this year and chose to highlight the ever-changing craft of filmmaking and storytelling. This year’s Showcase reflected modern storytelling taking into account the wide range of platforms stories are consumed on, highlighting the theme “Stories Unleashed.”
To introduce the Showcase, and celebrate the new Showcase theme, a short film was shown to the audience, directed by Trim Lamba whose Snapchat story called “Cracked Screen” was featured in 2017 at the New Directors Showcase. Lamba is represented by production company PRETTYBIRD and collaborated with Weirdcore for animation.
His film called The multi-storey showed a director seeking guidance on how best to produce an inspiring story in today’s multi-screen and multi-format world. In the film, the director gains crucial thinking and insight from key creatives at Google, Facebook, Instagram and Twitter.
Lamba said: “It came as a huge surprise to play at the NDS (New Directors Showcase) in 2017 and to be invited back so quickly, and within such a creative capacity, is a deep honor. This film invites audiences into a multi-storey building containing multiple digital stories. A similar vision was shared by our interviewees who suggest the future of storytelling might see us extending ‘beyond the screen’ where the physical and digital will entwine. What also emerged was their open, collective invitation to disrupt the screen: eschewing traditional practices that might limit storytelling. In keeping with this irreverent spirit, we hope the opening film will inspire audiences as much as it will inform.”
Lamba’s film aimed to show the importance of keeping creativity at the forefront in a world where technology and platforms are developing rapidly and audiences are quick to click and swipe.
The judging process this year was two-fold, with one internal Saatchi & Saatchi creative panel and one external body made up of key industry players that included: multi-award winning director Dougal Wilson, 2016 New Directors Showcase director James Burns, PRETTYBIRD UK founding partner Juliette Larthe, Google creative lead Andrew Bent, EMEA director of Creative Shop at Facebook Caitlin Ryan, Head of creators at Twitter EMEA Lindsey Turner, Biscuit managing director Rupert Reynolds-MacLean, and Factory founder and managing director Lisette Nice.
