A Rabbit’s Foot, the film and culture magazine founded by British producer Charles Finch, perhaps best known for throwing some of awards season’s most star-studded parties, has partnered with its sister production house Rabbit’s Foot Films on a short film division.
The announcement comes as the two unveil the winners of a short film competition they launched last year to help discover new filmmaking talent from around the world, with the ambition to work with them to develop both long and short-form content.
A Rabbit’s Foot will now distribute short films via its platform, while Rabbit’s Foot Films will produce a series of original shorts in partnership with the magazine.
Rabbit’s Foot Films is the new name for Finch’s Standalone Pictures, which rebranded in line with his magazine after the last feature he co-produced, Sofia Coppola’s Venice 2023 bowing “Priscilla” starring Cailee Spaeny and Jacob Elordi and
Popular on Variety
The company consists of Finch, Sara-Ella Ozbek and Issy Carr and already has a deal in place with Colombia Pictures and feature films in development with Netflix, Sony Pictures, Erik Feig’s Picturestart, Lorenzo Mieli’s newly-launched OUR Films and Entertainment Film Distribution.
For the short film competition, the judges included filmmaker and actor Isabel Sandoval, Bruce Robinson and filmmaker Anurag Kashyap.
The first prize went to “The Old Young Crow,” written, directed and produced by New Yorker Liam LoPinto. The 11-minute short, which combines live-action with animation, portrays an “Iranian boy who befriends an old Japanese woman at a graveyard in Tokyo.” LoPinto has been awarded a prize of £10,000 ($12,600).
The second prize up went to Estonian filmmaker and NFTS graduate Johannes Magnus Aule, whose film “The Tree of Many Faces” is a slavic folklore tale about “a broken-hearted woman named Anna who is led to make a deal with an ancient tree and its mischievous inhabitant.” With the prize — 5 x 400ft 16mm Kodak film with processing and scanning at Kodak’s London lab — Aule is set to make an original short in partnership with Rabbit’s Foot Films, with the ambition of shooting in Estonia and to be produced by Carr.
Ciara Kerr, another graduate of the U.K.’s NFTS was awarded third place for her animation “Homemaker,” which tackles the subject of domestic abuse. The editor’s prize was awarded to Berlin-based Canadian filmmaker Julia Patey, who made the original horror short “Bunny’s Foot.” Rabbit’s Foot Films will partner with Patey to make further short and long-form projects. Elsewhere in the competition, Catherine Marriott Brown’s “Itching,” Alfie Elms’ “Picturing Wonderland” and Phi Phi’s “Cherry” were all highly recommended.