SSFF & ASIA Opens in a Ceremony Worthy of the Metaverse

Are you ready for some amazing short films? It's time for Short Shorts Film Festival & Asia! We have already covered some of the early offerings from SSFF, and you should definitely check out the various lineups. This year, over 200 films were selected out of 5,720 entrants that were submitted from 126 countries and regions around the world. 

The festival's theme is "Meta Cinema: Transcend, Discover, Begin." And one of the opening short films of the online venue is Boy Sprouted—featuring a script written by artificial intelligence! The fest also explores the utilization of neuroscience and VR short films.

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The opening ceremony to SSFF & ASIA 2022 emphasized these new frontiers of technology and storytelling.

Watch the opening ceremony from June 7 in full below, then hop into our highlights!

Films have been screening online since May, so there are already awards to be given out during the opening ceremony.

• The winner of the U-25 Project Best Short Award was given to Marika Tamura.
• The Shibuya Diversity Award went to Takayuki Nakama and the film A Room Without Sound.
• The Biogen Award was given to Vikas Khanna for Barefoot Empress.
• The Amuse Musical Award went to The Sweet Impulse and filmmakers Ka-ki Wong and Yi Tang.
• The Milbon Beuty Award was given to The Hands and filmmaker Seowon Jung.
• The Save the Earth! Minister's Award, Ministry of the Environment, went to Penthouse and filmmakers Vegard Dahle and Line Klungseth Johansen.
• The Save the Earth! J-WAVE Award went to Present for Future by Shamir Raiapov.

Special guests from around Japan were on hand to discuss the winners and present the awards. All were excited about the creativity on display in the festival's selected films.

The Global Spotlight Award nominees were announced, as well. We covered these nominees in a previous article, so be sure to go back and watch all the nominated shorts!

Credit: Courtesy of SSFF & ASIA

The final award announcement was in the WOWOW Actors Short Film 2 category. The five nominated directors included Sho Aoyagi, Tina Tamashiro, Yudai Chiba, Eita Nagayama, and Atsuko Maeda. These directors discussed the unique challenges of moving from in front to behind the camera. For many, they said they enjoyed the process of editing as well, while most of the challenges came in pre-production.

Chiba, who wrote his short as well, still had difficulty remembering his own lines!

There was also a documentary created about these five directors and the process of making their shorts. That documentary will be available to stream on WOWOW.

If you want to check out more from the festival, visit their site and watch the amazing shorts online!

The festival was founded in 1999 as the Short Shorts Film Festival (SSFF). This festival is an Academy Award-accredited festival, meaning the winner of the best short awards in the competition, as well as the non-fiction competition, is eligible for nomination in the short film categories of the Academy Awards the next year.