Francesco Nassimbeni’s fashion film AEIOU scoops award at Cannes.
Created for jewellery brand Waif, AEIOU won the prestigious Jury Award for Best Experimental Short at the Cannes Short Film Festival this year.
Founded in 2014 in the world’s most important film destination, the Cannes Short Film Festival celebrates the best of international indie short filmmaking.
Formerly a theatre-director, Nassimbeni intends to apply his theatrical style to film. Evidently, it’s working, AEIOU is his first film.
“The actor is central to theatre practice. The actor is the medium via which we experience the world of the play. It is a heightened space,” says the director.
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This is also why he chose to work with actors. “All of the performers in the film are theatre actors. We therefore share a language, in a way. And I am so excited to capture this more in the medium of film.”
The film sits in a liminal space at the intersection of both genre and sector. It is neither pure commercial nor is it high art. It stars dedicated theatre actors versus
models. It is conceptual rather than literal and its main aim is to address a societal issue rather than pursue a retail outcome. As such, it represents new-wave production that places purpose above profits and is a sterling example of how the creative industries remain relevant as the interpreters of our modern, post-pandemic condition.
“Art feels very central to how I understand the world and my place within it. I think we all need art – perhaps now more than ever,” Nassimbeni concludes.
