Yorkshire Post Friday November 03 2017 8/film YP Tablet Apps Visit your app store

Short film fest with big ideas Cherie Federico talks to Sarah Freeman about Aesthetica Short Film Festival 2017

Cherie Federico is absolutely or five short films shown in sure that she’d love the each hour or hour and a half Aesthetica Short Film Festival. slot. However, this year there The only problem is that as will also be a strand dedicated founder of the event she rarely to British urban filmmaking, a gets a chance to draw breath series of Polish films and there when it takes over York each will be screenings with English November. subtitles for deaf audiences. “My place is behind the “It has been really wonderful scenes making sure everything to watch ASSF grow,” says goes smoothly,” she says. “I love Cherie. “I was really keen to watching people pouring out of include a Polish strand as York the station and every so often I is home to a significant Eastern partners: Colin Farrell and Nicole Kidman in The Killing of a Sacred Deer.  Picture: PA Photo/Curzon Artificial Eye wish that I was able to be part European population and I of the audience, but my job is thought it was important that elsewhere.” we to reach out to them. And this year, with the “The extra day means we festival having expanded from have also increased the number four to five days, it will be even of industry masterclasses, so we busier for Cherie who launched will have some of the team from the event after running a short Industrial Light and Magic, film competition in the arts who do all the Star Wars special Moral dilemma magazine Aesthetica, which she effects as well as representatives set up in 2002. from BBC Writers Room who Colin Farrell’s latest role is in sinister domestic drama “When the festival began will be revealing all about how it ran over three days, then best to pitch an idea.” The Killing Of A Sacred Deer. He spoke to Laura Harding. we moved to four, but there This year ASFF will feature still wasn’t enough room to do 300 films, including several UK everything we wanted. Plus we premieres and performances If an actor’s job is reinvention, thrown into disarray when his had a lot of people saying they from the likes of Martin Colin Farrell has become a master past catches up with him in the had run out of time to see the Freeman, Imelda Staunton, of the art. form of a menacing teenager. various films. Idris Elba and Toby Jones. From a fresh-faced young The young man, played by “I was thinking about adding The screenings take places thespian starting his career in Dunkirk’s Barry Keoghan, forces an extra day last year, but I’d in various venues across York, Ballykissangel to the vain city Farrell’s character to make a just had a baby so it wasn’t ideal. from the City Screen cinema slicker of Phone Booth, the action nearly impossible decision and However, when we sat down to the university buildings star of SWAT, Total Recall and the role took Farrell to some dark at the start of this year to talk at King’s Manor, to the bijou The Recruit and the butt of jokes places that lingered with him. about this year’s event, I just cinema in the bar 1331. in Horrible Bosses, Farrell is now “I knew it would be a bit of a thought, ‘Right, let’s go for it’.” “The nature of the festival entering his most interesting and mood changer,” he says. “I was a Cherie is known for means people get to explore challenging incarnation yet. little bit depressed by the end of it. spontaneous decisions. It the city while seeing films. We Audiences and critics alike were “I have to say I was ready though was a similar brainwave had one guy who managed to thrilled and delighted when he because we shot it kind of in which not only resulted in the see 146 films during the festival. showed a completely new side of chronological order as well, so I birth of ASFF, but also in the I think that might be a record, himself as a single man anxious to knew the whole telling of the story annual Aesthetica Art Prize but maybe this year someone find his life partner or be turned was going to result in obviously which rewards the best of might beat that.” into an animal at a bizarre hotel other in social environments. It’s what was coming down the road contemporary art. ■■ASFF run from November in Yorgos Lanthimos’s dark social not really about making sense which was this very fateful and Each year, ASFF features 8 to 11. For more information comedy The Lobster in 2013. or not making sense in Yorgos’s very grotesque and garish decision regular strands from comedy and to book passes visit www. He gained 40lb in weight, world. It’s just about taking that that my character had to make. to drama and thriller, with four asff.co.uk/tickets/ embraced his oddity and delivered leap of faith and immersing “It was a bit icky, even though Lanthimos’s distinctive staccato yourself in it and accepting the it’s fiction and you’re making film, dialogue as if he had never spoken rules which defy convention.” there’s crew everywhere, there are any other way. He stars as Dr Steven Murphy, certain moments and themes that Now 41, he has reunited with an eminent cardiothoracic are so dark if you begin to explore the director again for The Killing surgeon whose family life with them. Of A Sacred Deer, an even darker, wife Anna, played by Nicole “They can kind of get a bit more sinister effort than their Kidman, and their children is under your skin, if you’re doing previous collaboration. it for 12 or 14 hours a day. They The writing that he and (co- are hard to get out of your head writer) Efthymis Filippou do or your body when you have just together, how they work together, been inhabiting a certain mood is kind of seamless in its brilliance, for a while. but also in its absurdity. There are certain “It’s literally for five days a week, “There are all these very for 10 or 12 hours a day. There’s outlandish dynamics that they moments and not so much time spent in the create that are so logical somehow, themes that are so trailer, waiting for them to set even as disturbingly strange and, the camera up. You’re kind of on seemingly at times nonsensical, dark if you begin to set all day, which I love. So you’re screen time: Cherie Federico, founder of the Aesthetica Short Film and almost unbelievable that explore them. close to inhabiting that mood, that Festival which returns to York next week and will run over five days. people say these things to each mentality, throughout most of the