The Present is a tear-jerking animation that did very well on the festival circuit. It was Frey's graduation film from the famous Baden-Wurttemberg Film Academy in Germany, and is based on a comic strip by Brazilian artist Fabio Coala Cavalcanti. n an effort to get her son to play outside, his mother has bought him a present: a puppy. However, the puppy is missing a leg and the boy is disgusted by it. Will the lovable dog be able to win him over? And why is he so disgusted by the dog's disability anyway?
Black Rider (Schwarzfahrer) is a short German drama (with a large dose of black comedy) written and directed by the filmmaker Pepe Danquart and proving that some Germans do indeed have a sense of humor. Filmed in black & white, there is a definite European feel to it but this didn't stop Black Rider winning the Oscar for Best Short Film in 1994. It is a simple story of bigotry and comical revenge.
Delivery, made by Till Nowak while he was still a student, is a short animation that did very well on the international festival circuit, gaining a dozen awards along the way. In Delivery, an old man is living alone close to a metropolis around which all life is dying - including his last flower. But today he receives a mysterious package which gives him the ability to change his world... Nowak is now working as a VFX supervisor in the German television industry.
A man, bereft of his wife and child, has decided to commit suicide by setting up a contraption that means when a wind-up toy - a drumming panda - falls off the end of the table, it will trigger a shotgun. The man straps himself into a chair so as he cannot escape should he have any second thoughts. However, he then spies a baby in a pram by the busy road outside, and the pram brake is about to fail...