Filmmaker Juanita Wilson has found herself in the running for an Oscar nomination as an Irish entry for best short-film. Academy eligibility for the ‘The Door’ has come on the heels of an Irish Film and Television Award (IFTA) for Best Short Film, and the film was also honoured at the Sarajevo Film Festival by the Katrin Cartlidge Foundation Award 2009. ‘The Door’ was produced by Louise Curran and James Flynn, with Tim Fleming as its cinematographer.
Other awards for the film have included winning the Bilbao Film Festival, taking the top prize in the Best Short Film category at the Academy-affiliated Foyle Film Festival and the prestigious Clare Lynch Award at the Cork Film Festival. The film also screened at the prestigious Edinburgh and Munich film festivals and the Telluride Film Festival.
In the film a door is thought to be a universal symbol of life, of death, of entering the next life. The film’s main character, Nikolai, gives us what he sees as the facts, yet he himself is trying to make sense of them in his own mind. The story moves forwards and backwards in time, revealing the events retrospectively as the viewer bears witness to the universal tragedy of Chernobyl through the eyes of one man. The film was edited by Nathan Nugent with Niall Brady and Ken Galvin in charge of sound.
Screenings dates of ‘The Door’ in Los Angeles and New York City will be announced in the upcoming weeks. For more information about the film see www.thedoorshortfilm.com
Academy Awards 2010 nominations will be announced on Tuesday, February 2, 2010.
