Shira Geffen’s latest movie, The Event Horizon, a live-action short film, won the Golden Goblet award for Best Live Action Short Film at the Shanghai International Film Festival on Monday.
Accepting the award, Geffen said that winning the prize “encourages and gives hope that creators from all over the world will meet and proves that while governments suppress hopes and trust between people, the cinema enables a liberating dialogue, a place where you can feel and communicate and be human."
The Event Horizon was the only Israeli film accepted to a competition in the festival, which is the largest in Asia. The Israeli films, Running on Sand by Adar Shafran and Lies I Told Myself by Efim Graboy, were also screened at the festival.
Told through the eyes of a girl who is forced to grow up overnight, it is about a family that goes on vacation in the desert. Emily Weiss plays the lead role and the rest of the cast includes Ophir Award-winner Tinkerbell (Time of Favor), Timor Cohen (Karaoke), and Eldad Prives (Spell Keepers, Seven Minutes in Heaven).
Geffen has made two acclaimed feature films, Jellyfish (2007), which won the Camera d’Or Prize at the Cannes Film Festival, a series of loosely connected Tel Aviv stories; and Self Made (2014), about a Jewish conceptual artist and an Arab factory worker who change places, which won an award at the American Film Institute Festival.
Star-studded history
Geffen has also had a career as an actress and children’s book author. She is married to author Etgar Keret and they collaborated on a French television series, The Middleman. She is the sister of singer Aviv Geffen and her father was the legendary poet and songwriter, Yehonatan Geffen.