NOW CLOSED

THank you all for a successful launch!

HIGHLIGHTS

HOSTED PANELS

OFFICIAL SELECTION TRAILERS

THE East|Northeast TEAM

Robert Fontaine - Organizer

Michael Muyot - Business Strategies/ Green Tech Director

Sondra Edelman - Festival Director

Keith Nieto - Venue Artistic Director

Lisa Christie - Event Planner

Amy Shell - Urban Designer

Razvan Voroneanu - Urban Designer

Alan Douches - Audio/ Video Director

Simon Friedleich - Visual Coordinator

Ronald Nowiki - ENE Crewman

Troy Blatz - Production Assistant

Jeremy & Alec - Audio / Visual

Kathy Parisi - Production Assistant

Fayola Imani - Production Assistant/Social Media

Benson Elias - Production Assistant

Vince Edgehill - Screener

Diana Devilin - Screener

Michael Brainard - Screener

Robert Fontaine - Organizer

A successful launch

To the City Of Newburgh, our sponsors and the angels that just happened by, my team who stayed the course and watched me burn the ships at the shore, words cannot describe how proud I am of all of you and how grateful I am.

To Michael Muyot, my conference director, for 5 days straight, you were the Rockstar of the show.

A shout out to Mark Ruffalo, for the leg up! Thank you!

Robert Fontaine

MICHAEL MUYOT- Conference Director/Moderator

ENE is awarded Congressional Proclamation

Our Sponsors

PERFORMING ARTISTs 2020

TWO KOMACHIS

Drama/Fantasy

SYNOPSIS

One of the grim reapers, Wang has a taste to fall in love with a woman who is supposed to be brought to hell. Wang gets close to the woman, named Komachi, and try to build an intimate relationship.
​
One full moon night, Wang reveals that he is a grim reaper and tells Komachi to take her to hell from now on. Komachi begins to tremble when she hears it. And she instantly lies to Wang that she is now carrying his baby to escape from death. Troubled Wang generously tells Komachi that he can take another woman to hell if the woman's name and age are the same as Komachi.
​
Then, Komachi begs Wang to scapegoat another Komachi, who is her friend and is the same age as her.
He listens to her wishes and goes to another Komachi, but Wang falls in true love with that another Komachi.

TAKESHI SONE - DIRECTOR

Director Biography

Takeshi Sone studied scenario-writing in Japan. and has worked as not only director, but cinematographer, editor. Recent years he has made feature films in the U.S., South-Korea, Europe, Taiwan and Hong Kong. One of his work (One Cut of the Dead) as a cinematographer is a blockbuster in Japan and he won one of Japan Academy Prize.

Director Statement

This whole film was shot in Hong Kong. I visited Hong Kong five years ago, but many of the sights I saw in the past have changed. Although the old city-scape is barely present now, the scenery is changing rapidly and disappearing. It is probably a matter of time before old Hong Kong is gone. Now is the time you to shoot in Hong Kong before the old city is gone. This is the way the film project ideas began. The idea of ​​wanting to reflect both the good old Hong Kong and the modern Hong Kong from a Japanese perspective. The original novel of “Two Komachis (Futari Komachi)” is a Japanese classic, and many years have passed in the work. I think it’s suitable for expressing the past and present Hong Kong. Each of the characters, women, men and other people, appearing in “Two Komachis” has two aspects. The events depicted in the story have two-sides because those events can be interpreted differently depending on how you view from. Serious depictions for the characters appear humorous for the audiences. These two aspects are just as different as the old and the present Hong Kong.

CREDITS

Takeshi Sone - Director

Etsuo Hiratani - Writer

Arihiro Wada - Producer

Hanna Chan - Key Cast

Eliz Lao - Key Cast

Soko Izumi - Key Cast

Takayuki Hamatsu - Key Cast

Josie Ho - Key Cast

Project Type: Feature

Runtime: 1 hour 25 minutes 47 seconds

Completion Date: September 15, 2019

Country of Origin: Japan

Country of Filming: Hong Kong

Language: Chinese

Shooting Format: Digital 4K

Aspect Ratio: 1:2.35

Film Color: Color

First-time Filmmaker: No

Student Project: No

“BEST ANIMATION”

EPIRENOV

SYNOPSIS

Epirenov is the last inhabitant on Earth. He monotonously walks around the empty desert in search of pieces necessary to build a partner. In one of his usual tours he discovers an artifact that will change his world.

Director - Alejandro Ariel Martin


Director Biography

Alejandro Ariel Martin is an audiovisual director in Film and Television, has a Degree in Social Communication from the National University of Rosario and has a postgraduate degree in Creative Communication from the Autonomous University of Barcelona.  He is the director and screenwriter of the animated short film Epirenov, winner of the Espacio Santafesino stimulus award

CREDITS

Alejandro Ariel Martin - Director / Writer

• Roxana Bordione - Producer

• Florencia Pilotti - Producer

• Carolina Cairo - Production Designer

• Alejandro Ariel Martin - Production Designer

• Agustín Pagliuca - Sound Designer

• Alejandro Ariel Martin - Director of Photography

• Marcos Garfagnoli - Colorist

• Paula Bertolino - Assistant Director

• Paula Bertolino - Editor

• Alejandro Ariel Martin - Editor

• Flavio de Arrea - Original Music

Project Title (Original Language): Epirenov

• Project Type:

  Animation

• Genres:

  Drama, Sci-Fi, stop Motion

• Runtime:

  15 minutes

• Completion Date:

  November 8, 2019

• Production Budget:

  10,000 USD

• Country of Origin:

  Argentina

• Country of Filming:

  Argentina

• Shooting Format:

  Digital - 4k - DCP

• Aspect Ratio:

  16:9

• Film Color:

  Color

• First-time Filmmaker:

  No

• Student Project:

  No

TOMORROW’S GONE

Documentary

SYNOPSIS

In the early 2000's, Tel Avivian Journalist and Musician Boaz Goldberg began to document his friend Gabi Abudraham - a dreamy young man from the Beit She'an periphery, with an obsession for Elvis, a fascination for mystical teachings and virtuoso musical abilities. The shy Abudraham creates an eccentric character named Charlie Megira, embarking on a stormy musical journey and reaching large stages in the United States. Together with his struggle for worldwide artistic recognition, Abudraham was forced to deal constantly with the inner demons that he tried to silence with the larger than life figure he created. Meanwhile, Goldberg struggles to eliminate his personal demons in order to finish the film, moving along a timeline of nearly two decades and examining what happens when an artist crosses the boundaries he has set for himself.

Director - Boaz Goldberg

Director Biography

Boaz Goldberg (1974) is a documentary filmmaker and an interdisciplinary artist. He worked as a music journalist for more than a decade ("Zman Tel Aviv", "City Mouse", "The City", "Israel Today") and meticulously covered the alternative music scene in Israel. Goldberg later had several editing and directing jobs in many television programs. He dabbled in painting, photography and recording music. All of this led him into the world of documentary filmmaking. Tomorrow's Gone, a full feature film about the life and death of Charlie Megira, is his debut feature documentary.

Director Statement

Romanticism über alles

Project Title (Original Language): מחר כבר עבר

• Project Type: Documentary, Feature, Other

• Genres: Music Documentary, Rock-N-Roll Film, Memoir

• Runtime: 1 hour 9 minutes 47 seconds

• Completion Date: May 28, 2019

• Production Budget: 10,000 USD

• Country of Origin: Israel

• Country of Filming: Germany, Israel, United States

• Language: English, Hebrew

• Shooting Format: Mini-DV, Digital, VHS, 8mm, 4k

• Aspect Ratio: flat 1:85

• Film Color: Color

• First-time Filmmaker: Yes

• Student Project: No

“BEST STUDENT FILM”

GUM

SYNOPSIS

Five strangers take a co-car together. On the highway, one of them gets sick and asks to stop. The others would like to help, but circumstances make them not slow down.

DIRECTOR - Louis De Sousa

Credits

Louis De Sousa - Director

Axel Meernout -Director of photography

Project Title (Original Language): GUM

• Project Type:

  Short, Student

• Runtime:

  14 minutes 34 seconds

• Completion Date:

  December 1, 2019

• Production Budget:

  3,000 EUR

• Country of Origin:

  Belgium

• Country of Filming:

  Belgium

• Shooting Format:

  Digital

• Aspect Ratio:

  1:33

• Film Color:

  Black & White and Color

• First-time Filmmaker:

  Yes

• Student Project:

  Yes

SEIZE

Drama

SYNOPSIS

In a town between the mountains, a man guarding and protecting a Philippine forest faces a great tempest in his life.

Director - Joseph Michael Tan

Director Biography

Joseph Michael Tan is a young filmmaker from Cebu, Philippines, he aspires to create true, extensive and human concepts on his work, before he graduated a degree on film making he participated in some of the top film festivals in the Philippines

Director Statement

The film seeks to feature the outcry of our environmental defenders. 

The infamous culture of impunity in the Philippines is reflected with the illegal activity of the corrupt and powerful. 

Humanity must protect the environment for the following generation and species,

there is hope in saving the wrecked condition of our forest, 
even if lives are threatened, 
even if justice is a quest, 
together, 

there is hope. 

CREDITS

Joseph Michael Tan - Director / Writer/ Producer

Leon Miguel - Key Cast “Ruben” Graceland, Metro Manila, Redlights, Siargao, Kid Kulafu,

Publio Briones III - Key Cast “Joel Panagdait”

Project Title (Original Language): Sakmit

• Project Type:

  Short

• Runtime:

  14 minutes 59 seconds

• Completion Date:

  May 15, 2019

• Production Budget:

  1,500 USD

• Country of Origin:

  Philippines

• Country of Filming:

  Philippines

• Shooting Format:

  Digital

• Aspect Ratio:

  16:9

• Film Color:

  Color

• First-time Filmmaker:

  No

• Student Project:

  No

“SPOTLIGHT AWARD”

ONE NIGHT IN TEHRAN

SYNOPSIS

A women in search of happiness within the chaos of this all consuming world, climbs into a taxi cab one night, unaware of how her life will change forever.

Director - Farhad Najafi


Director’s Biography

Farhad was born in Naishabur, Iran. After he entered the conservatory art school for studying graphic designing, he found out his passion in professional photography and following after that in movie industry and directing. He made his first documentary film called "Iran and Naria" in the very early months of entering art school despite the obstacles and limited environment of movie industry in Iran. A short film called "motion" was only needed four months to be created by him after then. At the only age of nineteen, he began to write the screenplay of his first movie "First move", after producing four short films. Then he launched the direction of his first series "Matador" which is the most successful action genre Iranian TV-show so far. Making successful and award winning action movies and series such as Room Number Zero, Aspirin and Matador which has won the best film of Moscow international festival in action genre, has made him to climb up the career ladder surprisingly.

CREDITS

Farhad Najafi - Director/ Writer/ Producer

• Hamid Salimi

  Writer

  Mina Vahid

  Key Cast

  “Leila”

• Tirdad Kiaei

  Key Cast

  “Farhad”

• Mohammad Mehdi Hosseini

  Key Cast

  “Amir Ali”

Project Type: Feature

• Runtime:

  1 hour 18 minutes

• Completion Date:

  July 1, 2019

• Country of Origin:

  Iran, Islamic Republic of

• Country of Filming:

  Iran, Islamic Republic of

• Language:

  Persian

• Shooting Format:

  RED

• Film Color:

  Color

• First-time Filmmaker:

  No

• Student Project:

  No

FILMMAKERS!! Please be aware that this year we are not giving out physical awards due to COVID -19. At some point a physical award will be sent out sometime during 2021.

THANK YOU FOR AN AMAZING YEAR!!

From thought-provoking dramas, documentaries, and shorts, to outstanding avant-garde works, every year since 2019, our multicultural event celebrates the works of new and innovative filmmaking talent from around the world.

DOCUMENTARIES

SHORT FILMS

STUDENT FILMS

ANIMATION

SPECIAL SCREENINGS

Carver

Drama

SYNOPSIS

Carver portrays toxic masculinity through the story of Ernesto, a man who at night dresses as Carver and patrols his neighborhood. One day, a mysterious girl asks him to hunt down the drug dealer who killed her brother. From then on, his life becomes more and more chaotic until it is impossible to distinguish between the real and the imaginary.

DIRECTOR - Evgeny Yablokov

Director Biography

Evgeny Yablokov was born in the Russian city of Ivanovo in 1988. After studying business at university, he moved to Moscow where he founded a company and achieved some success, but instead of continuing with business, he decided to change his life and moved to Madrid to study filmmaking. There, he began to feel lonely and misunderstood, removed from his new society. He channeled this feeling into writing Carver in an attempt to speak to the world through a man hiding behind a mask.

CREDITS

Evgeny Yablokov - Director

Evgeny Yablokov - Writer

Evgeny Yablokov - Producer

Project Type: Feature

Runtime: 1 hour 22 minutes

Completion Date: January 4, 2021

Country of Origin: Spain

Country of Filming: Spain

Language: Spanish

Film Color: Color

First-time Filmmaker: No

Student Project: No

“BEST ANIMATION”

painting by numbers

SYNOPSIS

When we look at great art, do we realize it is looking back? With eyes that see more clearly than we do?

In a mysterious gallery imbued with strange life, shadows of the past and unresolved futures collide when a child's vision peels away the layers of what we call 'reality'...join a journey through the masterpieces you thought you knew as their hidden souls are finally given a voice.

As layers of contemporary 'reality' are stripped away, art's unseen soul brings a challenge we can neither ignore nor escape. Or can we? Will their message be heard in time?

The door is open. The masters' works await us. Who will enter?

DIRECTOR - Radheya Jegatheva


Director Biography

Radheya Jegatheva is an Oscar qualified and AACTA nominated filmmaker based in Perth, Australia, and born in Johor, Malaysia to parents of South Korean, Japanese, Indian, and Malaysian ancestry. He is a Bachelor of Commerce and Arts graduate from Curtin University (2021) in Western Australia. Radheya's films have been selected to 27 Academy Award Qualifying Festivals. His 2019 film, The Quiet was Oscar qualified, and his 2017 film iRony was nominated for an Australian Academy of Cinema & TV Arts (AACTA) Award.

Radheya's films which collectively have more than 1,570 official selections and 540 awards worldwide have been played in all the world’s 7 continents including Antarctica at the Davis Research Station.

Director Statement

THE CREATION PROCESS:
Procreate on iPad was used to individually draw various elements of the paintings (new and old). The classical paintings had to be entirely digitally redrawn and repainted by me, from scratch using the originals as close references.

Adobe After Effects was used for compositing work and more digital animation. 2D digitally painted elements animated and positioned within a 3D environment.

Adobe Animate was used for some minor frame-by-frame elements.

Logic Pro X was used to create the soundtrack.

CREDITS

Radheya Jegatheva - Director / Writer / Editor

Matt Hearn - Producer

Jay Jay Jegathesan - Producer

Steeve Body - Music

Project Type: Animation, Documentary, Experimental, Short

Runtime: 4 minutes

Completion Date: January 3, 2021

Production Budget: 750 USD

Country of Origin: Australia

Country of Filming: Australia

Shooting Format: Digital

Aspect Ratio: 16:9

Film Color: Color

First-time Filmmaker: No

Student Project: Yes

Dima punk

Documentary

SYNOPSIS

Once a punk... always a punk? Stof is a young punk from Casablanca. During the eight years that we followed him, he tried to set his Mohawk against all odds. He pays a heavy price for his independence when he finds himself arrested and imprisoned for eleven months. Will he remain “Dima Punk”, forever a punk?

DIRECTOR - Dominique Caubet

Director Biography

Dominique Caubet is Professor Emerita of Maghrebi Arabic at INALCO Paris. A sociolinguist specializing in Moroccan Arabic, she has written numerous books and articles on Morocco. Over the past ten years, she has worked on the underground music scene and cultural movement that developed between 2005 and 2007, a Moroccan movida called Nayda. She had a first experience as an author for the documentary Casanayda! directed by F. Benlyazid, A. Mettour, Sigma - Casablanca, 2007. Dima Punk is her first film as a filmmaker.

Director Statement

Years of immersion have won Stof’s and Orland’s confidence. Stof is a punker and Orland was his mentor, ten years ago. To film in their neighborhood, the camera gradually became habitual and therefore, invisible. The film is a portrait, but, at the same time, a rare narrative on the situation of popular Urban youths in Morocco with different tastes, who are left out of the system and left to themselves. “NEET” is the acronym given to the 2.7 million young people from age 15 to 29 in this case in Morocco -it stands for No Education, No Employment, No Training. Stof is one of them and he struggles to try and be himself and at the same time to fit in the margins of the system.

CREDITS

Dominique Caubet - Director

Dominique Caubet - Writer

Christian Pfohl - Producer

Rita El Quessar - Producer

Reda Benjelloun - Producer

Project Type: Documentary

Runtime: 1 hour 2 minutes

Completion Date: March 31, 2019

Production Budget: 98,000 EUR

Country of Origin: France

Language: Arabic

Student Project: No

“BEST STUDENT FILM”

oscar

SYNOPSIS

Oscar, thirty years old, has made a path of transspecies: now he feels a dog in the body of a human being. Angela, her mother, is now determined to introduce him to her partner Gianmarco.

DIRECTOR - Riccardo Copreni

Director Biography

Riccardo Copreni was born in Monza in 1998. After studying at the scientific high school he began attending the Civica Scuola di Cinema, Luchino Visconti. During his academic years, he wrote as a film critic for Sentieridelcinema. it and Cinelapsus.com and was the animator of several film forums in Milan and in the province. In 2019 he co-founded the collective Studio Genesi for which he produces and directs several commercials. In 2020 began to work at Sky Italia. In 2020 he directed his first short film as an Oscar diploma film.

Director Statement

Oscar is the story of a woman who keeps a secret and this secret suffocates and locks her up.
We worked to build a world, a house that is a cave of Plato, a fake world, colorful and sweet that hides a secret that does not want to reveal itself. We looked for anesthetics patinated by classic American melodrama in which, however, the atmosphere seems infected.
Oscar is also the story of lonely characters, who seek affection and love, but who are not willing to accept and love themselves even in their secrets and in the shadows.
But Oscar is first and foremost the story of a mother-son relationship that slowly unfolds. A morbid relationship that reveals itself in its tenderness and alienation together. An extreme relationship that is a distorted mirror of more everyday dynamics.
We sought a narrative tone that was so a mixture of tenderness and madness, of beauty and ugliness, of elegance and kitsch, of realism and surrealism, of which the core is precisely the problem of a human relationship.

CREDITS

Riccardo Copreni - Director

Giammaria Lupo Cerutti - Writer

CivicaScuola di Cinema Luchino Visconti - Producer

Project Title (Original Language): Oscar

Project Type: Short

Genres: Drammatico, grottesco

Runtime: 18 minutes 38 seconds

Completion Date: September 30, 2020

Country of Origin: Italy

Country of Filming: Italy

Language: Italian

Shooting Format: Digital

Aspect Ratio: 2.39:1

Film Color: Color

First-time Filmmaker: Yes

Student Project: Yes

Pub kid

Drama

SYNOPSIS

What happens when your local playground becomes your local pub? Pie-eyed parents, lairy locals, and awkward situations for a child in an adult world. Share a shandy with a pint-sized Pub Kid.

Director - Liam Young

Director Biography

Liam Young is a filmmaker based in the West Midlands.

Liam’s most recent film, Pub Kid, was commissioned by the BBC and appeared on BBC4 on 8th February 2021.

Other notable films are “The Ketchup Conspiracy” and “Car Boot Chris”, both of which were nominated for 4 Royal Television Society Awards and he won 1 in the Comedy & Entertainment category.

Director Statement

A film about child neglect, awkwardness, and escape.

Pub Kid was part of BBC New Creatives, funded by Arts Council England. It appeared on BBC4 in February 2021 and was featured on the BBC Website. 

CREDITS

Liam Young - Director

Liam Young - Writer

Mollie Broomfield - Producer

Project Type: Short

Runtime: 3 minutes 18 seconds

Completion Date: November 1, 2020

Production Budget: 5,000 GBP

Country of Origin: United Kingdom

Country of Filming: United Kingdom

Shooting Format: Alexa Mini ProRes 444 XQ 4K UHD

Aspect Ratio: 16:9

Film Color: Color

First-time Filmmaker: No

Student Project: No

“Best spotlight Feature”

AFTER THE INCIDENT

SYNOPSIS

A child named Ruhollah has suffered an unfortunate event. He decides to turn his scar into stars by trying to achieve his goal.

DIRECTOR - Pouria Heidary Oureh


Director’s Biography

Pouria Heidary Oureh was born in 1984 in Tehran, Iran. From a young age, he was interested in visual and performing arts and storytelling, especially through drawings. He graduated from the SAE Institute of Digital Film in Dubai and advertising from EMU in North Cyprus and he is a member of the Cinema Producers Guild of Iran since 2018.

He has worked with several renowned Iranian directors in Iran as well as abroad in his home country before moving on to direct his own films. Since then he started to direct his own films. Pouria Heidary Oureh's debut feature film "Apricot Groves" became the most internationally appeared film in the history of Armenia cinema with more than 95 international festival selections and also been the most successful co-production of Iranian cinema. He is the owner of Three Gardens Film which has been produced several successful film projects and has been selected in A graded film festivals around the world such as Cannes, Venice, Berlinale, Toronto, Locarno, Cairo, Montreal, Sundance, AFI and... Three Gardens Film's short films "Gaze" "Exam" "The Role" have been qualified for Oscars. Three Gardens Film is also one of the best cinema technical support companies in the middle east. He co-produced films with Iran, Armenia, France, Czech Republic, Italy Serbia, Croatia, Poland, Chile, Finland & Qatar.

CREDITS

Pouria Heidary Oureh - Director

Pouria Heidary Oureh - Writer

Shahab Hosseini - Producer

Project Type: Documentary, Feature

Runtime: 1 hour 15 minutes

Completion Date: October 14, 2020

Country of Origin: Iran, Islamic Republic of

Country of Filming: Canada, Iran, Islamic Republic of

Language: Persian

Shooting Format: 4k

Film Color: Color

First-time Filmmaker: No

Student Project: No

THANK YOU FOR AN AMAZING YEAR!!

The E*NE Music Spotlight brings the world of music closer to you by introducing you to new and emerging talent from all over the world. See and experience emerging artists, established performers, and developing talent, streamed live this year.