THE LANDING
2014 · 18m · Australia
Directed by Josh Tanner
Genres: drama, sci-fi, thriller
Tones: melancholic, surreal, tense
A man returns to the midwestern farm of his childhood determined to unearth the horrifying truth about what landed there in the summer of 1960, unraveling a deeply buried secret that implicates his own family.
Picked by Felix
The scouts
An Australian crew built a midwestern American UFO drama on a Superman Returns barn set and somehow made it about fatherhood — that's the kind of geographical and thematic audacity I can't ignore.
Tanner uses the UFO shell as a Trojan horse for father-son grief in the Jeff Nichols mode — Take Shelter compressed to seventeen minutes. The Sitges win is earned; this is sci-fi shortcraft at its most disciplined.
Sitges Best Short Film + LA Shorts Fest Best Foreign — Academy-qualifying multi-festival circuit short that wears its UFO/Cold War shell over a father-son trauma drama. Eighteen minutes; Henry Nixon brings real weight.
Festivals
- Sitges International Fantastic Film Festival 2015, Best Short Film
- LA Shorts Fest 2015, Best Foreign Film
- Cleveland International Film Festival 2015, Best International Short