Greek filmmaker Vasilis Kekatos won on Saturday at the 72nd Cannes Festival the Palme d’Or with the short film “The Distance Between Heaven and Us.”
He is the first Greek director to ever win a Palme d’Or in this category.
The film which was selected out of 4.240 submissions is about two strangers meeting for the first time at a gas station on an old Greek highway. One has stopped to gas up his bike, while the other is just stranded. Lacking the 22.50 euros he needs to get home, he will try to sell him the distance that separates them from the sky.
Born in Kefalonia, Greece in 1991, Vasilis Kekatos is a graduate student of the film department of Brunel University’s School of Arts, in London.
In 2016, he won Sundance Ignite “What’s Next?” Short Film Challenge and received mentorship from Sundance Institute, with his short Zero Star Hotel.
In 2017, he participated in Euro Connection in Clermont-Ferrand ISFF, as well as in Nisi Masa ESP, with the script of his short, The Silence of the Dying Fish.
The film had its world premiere at Locarno Film Festival 2018. It has also been selected in many international film festivals, such as ZINEBI and Aix-En-Provence, and it has been awarded in several, like Festcourt Villeurbanne where it won Best Film and Drama ISFF where it won Best Southeastern European Film, as it continues its tour of the festival circuit.
Source: timesnews.gr