We’re delighted to share news that our darkly-comic, fast-paced animation Wake Up Call has been awarded bronze at this year’s prestigious Innsbruck Nature Film Festival, in Austria.
More than 230 films from all over the world were submitted and 44 were selected for the official competition. Wake Up Call was selected for the short films category and secured third place, garnering the films first official award from the film festival circuit.
The jury statement from the event praised the film saying “This is what short films must be like: crisp, clear message, many small, fine details.” They went on to add “The animated film Wake Up Call shows – with perfect craftsmanship and snappy images – a very up-to-date topic, which concerns all of us who believe that iPhones and other gadgets are cool and great: The relationship between costs and benefits is gone awry and consumption madness the result, ruining our planet in an unbearable way. Escaping to the countryside is certainly not a solution either.”
Rowan Phillimore from The Gaia Foundation commented “we’re over the moon with recognition of the film through this award. Wake Up Call took some ten months to craft and a great deal of thought went into considering every stage of the lifecycle of our electronic gadgets, and all of the nuanced issues as stake. We hope that the award enables the film to reach an even larger audience, particularly in the lead up to Christmas, when many people will be buying gadgets that they simply don’t need, unaware of the true costs.”
Wake Up Call was released in January this year following the release of The Gaia Foundation’s Short Circuit report in 2013. The report unpacked the lifecycle of our gadgets from extraction through to consumption and disposal, and the animation used this same narrative as its premise. Creating a nightmarish tale of excessive consumerism, promoted through relentless marketing and all the while undermined by ruthless extraction, the animation hits home about the direction our current path is taking us.
If you haven’t yet watched the 6-minute animation, view it on the dedicated campaign website where you can also purchase campaign stickers to reclaim your tech and find out much more about the story behind the film.