News & Reports

Short Shorts Film Festival & Asia (SSFF & ASIA), one of Asia’s largest international short film festivals accredited by the Academy Awards®︎, has announced the winner of the Minister’s Award, the Ministry of the Environment, on June 5th, the World Environment Day.

The winning shorts of the Minister of the Environment Award this year is “Desert Lights” by Katherina Harder.

Director:Katherina Harder/Time0:18:56/ Country:Chile/Genre: Drama/Year:2022

In the middle of Atacama desert, Antay(12) sees his town disappearing due to the drought. Alongside his friends and their football team, they will try to hang on to the last sunrays, their childhood fragments and the ties with those who still resist.

Comments from the director

Hello friends from short shorts in Japan. I am Katherina Harder, director of the chilean Short film Desert Lights.
We have just received the amazing news that we have been awarded with ‘save the earth award’ from the Ministry of the Environment.
 Thank you so much on behalf of our entire team. We are all super excited. It is a tremendous honor fo rus.
This is an award that has a very special meaning for us for having the focus on the environment and also for being awarded at a festival as wonderful as “short short” , which is a reference for short films worldwide
So we’re very excited. As I said before, it’s a tremendous honor.
We are very happy that this story that we shooted here in an extreme region, in the extreme north of Chile, with non-actor kids from our región, It could have emotionally connected there in such a distant country.

We are very happy that despite the physical distance we can connect through the cinema.
Cinema unites us, connects us and also allows us to open little windows to reflect about urgent issues worldwide.
So we want to thank you again for this wonderful award and send you a big greeting from chile.