Have you already found out the 20 finalists?

Here are some fun facts about them!  

Across My Land, portrait of a young American family patrolling the Arizona-Mexico border, is produced by American actor Joaquin Phoenix. Fiona Godivier, its young director, for her first film worked with Scarlett Johansson.

Derin Seale‘s The Eleven o’Clock was nominated for the Best Live Action Short Film at the 90^th Academy Awards. Derin comes from an artistic family. In fact, his father, John, is a famous cinematographer who worked in films such as The English Patient (winner of nine Academy Awards), Dead Poets Society, Rain Man, Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, Mad Max: Fury Road, Cold Mountain and many others!

Christopher Barrett and Luke Taylor, authors of the short film Cautionary Tales, shot a commercial for Comcast, one of the leading cable networks in the United States, which was broadcast in the last edition of the Superbowl.

Chinese-American director Johnson Cheng, who directed Iron Hand, began his career working as an intern at PIXAR for the films Monsters University and Coco. He also worked as editor in Kung Fu Panda 3, the first animation produced by DreamWorks in co-production with Oriental DreamWorks, a Shanghai-based studio.

Mohammad Farahani, born in Tehran in 1985, is not a professional director, as he graduated in Industrial Engineering from the University of Tehran. He is the author of From Hasakah with love.

Eduardo Vieitez, the Spanish director of the short Mama, produced in Turkey, worked as a director for many commercials. Among its customers are BMW, Nike, Samsung, Durex, MTV, McDonald’s, Heineken, Greenpeace and Movistar.

Mrs McCutcheon is the debut film by John Sheedy, opera director.

27-year-old Tehran director Kaveh Mazaheri, with his film Retouch won the Best Short Fiction award at the 2017 Tribeca Film Festival.

Jordan Bond, one of the two directors of Australian short film Big City, also directed Oddball: the nature of a movie, one of National Geographic’s flagship programs.