Sevilla

The mood is light, fun, and positive, but these sequences are juxtaposed against more somber ones with just the friend and girl as they retrace the steps from before. Director Bram Schouw smartly parallels those conflicting states of adventure and hindsight to draw you deep into their world. The structure is disarming, causing many different outcomes to shoot through your mind, while still leaving the climax a surprise. Schouw captures that complicated mantra championed by mom’s worldwide, “It’s always fun until someone gets hurt,” with surprising realism and honesty. The result is an original and brave take on friendship and the bonds created during adventure and misadventure. Even if we unravel, we can still be put back together—maybe not as perfect as before, but just as strong.

Bram Schouw graduated with honors at the Utrecht School of the Arts. His graduation film, Marriage, was the official opening movie for Curta Cinema Rio de Janeiro in 2005. Impasse, his second short film, has its world premiere at the Tokyo International Film Festival in 2008 and was selected at renowned film festivals in New York, Sarajevo, and Paris. Sevilla won a Golden Calf at the Netherlands Film Festival and screened in over 50 international film festivals, winning multiple awards. Together with the same team, Schouw just finished a new short film called All Those Sunflowers and is developing his first feature film, Broers, which is scheduled to go into production in 2015.