The Stairway (L'Escalier) by Alexandra Torterotot was the winner of the first ever FILMSshort competition. Torterotot is a French filmmaker and The Stairway was shot in her native Paris. Written by Sylvain Aubert-Garmendia, it is a simple and nightmarish story of a man who cannot escape a never-ending but always changing series of stairways. When not making short films, Alexandra works as a script supervisor and putting together feature films.
LXIV (64 in Roman numerals - see if you can work out why!) is dedicated to Damien's father, Jack, who died in 2009. A beautifully shot montage, it was his final year film from Staffordshire University, England, and pieces together a dazzling array of shots that condense our existence into a three-minute film. It is a bit like the Sundance/Youtube feature experiment A Life In A Day (though thankfully with less animal slaughter) and was shot on the Canon DSLRs.