News & Reports

Short Shorts Film Festival & Asia (SSFF & ASIA) 2024, one of Asi’s largest international short film festivals accredited by the U.S. Academy Awards, announced on June 5 (Wednesday), the Save the Earth! the Minister of the Environment Award, given to the film that best conveys a message on environmental issues among all the films selected for the competition. The award will be presented on June 5, Environment Day.

　The SSFF & ASIA 2024 Environment Minister's Prize has been awarded to an Italian film, “Local Warming” (Director: Manuel Vitali), which focuses on global warming and depicts people trying

to survive an unbearable heat wave.

https://www.shortshorts.org/2024/program/int/int-4/local-warming/

The film is available at the festival’s online venue from Saturday, June 1.

『LOCAL WARMING』　

Director：Manuel Vitali/08:07/Italia/Comedy/2022

Heat reaches unbearable levels in an unknown village, forcing its inhabitants to seek extreme solutions in order to survive.　Everyday life is shaped by the whims of the sun, assuming a dreamlike… and baleful touch.

SSFF & ASIA established the “Stop Global Warming Competition” in 2008 in collaboration with the national campaign “Challenge 25 Campaign” to prevent global warming. “Global Warming Competition” was established in 2008 in conjunction with the ‘Challenge 25 Campaign,’ a national campaign to prevent global warming, and in 2013 it was reborn as ”Save the Planet!” Since 2020, the festival has expanded the “Save the Planet!” awards to include more diverse global issues, with the aim of communicating the diversity of environmental issues to the entire planet.

We hope that this work will help people to rethink environmental issues and create a desire for

the future. We would be grateful if you could introduce this film to the public and cover the event.

Comment from the Minister of the Environment: “I think this film impressively depicts the problem of global warming in a composition of sharp black-and-white images and scat music.

Roads too hot for people and dogs to walk barefoot, severe water shortages, burning land, people going into the sea. The film is a strong representation of the climate crisis with fast-paced editing. The film strongly emphasizes the urgent global issues that we must tackle now.

The Ministry of the Environment believes that environmental issues are a “concentric circle” that spreads from the local to the global level, and that they can be addressed by changing the awareness of each and every one of us.”

Why the award went to this film: The work was very cinematic, using only images and sound to

express the heat of the ground that made it impossible to walk barefoot. The comical touch of

the film also makes its message less intrusive and more powerful. The theme of “environment”

(water shortage, global warming, etc.) was more prominent in this film than in any other film.

『Local Warming』　Director：Manuel Vitali

Manuel Vitali is an Italian director who pursued cinema after studying animation and storyboarding. He has written and directed over 20 short films, most of which have been international collaborations, and now he is currently working on his first feature project.

【Comments after winning the award】

Minna, Konnichiwa. Watashiwa Manuel Vitali desu.

And this is one of the few things I can say in Japanese, but I’m learning slowly.

And I wanted to send this Video to express my extreme gratitude towards short shorts film festival and the Ministry of Environment, who I found out, watched the movie and decided to give an award to the film. Its such a big honor.

Coming to Japan is already so something beautiful and knowing that now I’m coming to receive a prize. I still have to wake up. It seems like a dream.

And I want to use this video also to say thank you to Son of A Pitch, the distribution who made this possible.

And I can’t wait to be there with all of you guys.

It’s so beautiful that an issue like the environmental issue, it’s something taken seriously and something that people really care about.

So again, Hontoni Arigato Gozaimasita!