South African short film, A Shot at the Big Time, has been selected to feature at the Cannes Film Festival in France, which takes place from 14 to 25 May 2014.
Written and produced by Durban filmmaker Janet van Eeden, the film will compete with eight other entries in the short film section, the Cannes Court Metrage, for the Short Film Palme d’or which will be awarded to the winning film on 24 May.
Van Eeden, whose story is based on the mysterious death of her brother Jimmy in 1979, launched an Indiegogo crowd funding campaign for the film to be shot as a feature. Though unable to get funding for the film without giving away the rights, she approached a young director from Australia, Stephen de Villiers and a producer from London, Magda M. Olchawska, who were interested in producing the film as a short.
“This honour is something my co-producer, Magda, and I have dreamed of since we joined forces to make A Shot at the Big Time, the short. We met online when I ran the Indiegogo.com crowdfunding campaign in 2011. I’d given up on the dream recently and am working hard at present raising funds to make the feature film by the end of the year, so when Magda let me know that we’d been accepted I was over the moon,’ says Van Eeden.
The digital platform also connected Van Eeden with lead actors Brad Backhouse and Sean C. Michael, who auditioned online.
After shooting the short in in July 2012, A Shot at the Big Time was selected for the Durban FilmMart in the same year. In 2013 it featured at the Durban International Film Festival and was awarded an eThekwini Film Award.
“I’d never been able to forget Jimmy’s tragic life, and after being challenged by film and theatre critic, Robert Greig, to write about my own life instead of writing plays about literary greats, I finally had the courage to put pen to paper and tackle one of the saddest experiences of my life,’ she concluded.
Watch the behind-the-scenes video of A Shot at the Big Time.
