Hiro (film)

Last updated
Hiro
Hiro movie crouch.jpg
Movie screenshot
Directed by Matthew Swanson
Written by Matthew Swanson
Produced byOliver Lindsay
Starring Hiro Kanagawa
Vicky Huang
Music byDon MacDonald
Distributed byPaper Cut Films
Release date
  • September 11, 2005 (2005-09-11)(TIFF)
Running time
20 minutes
CountryCanada
LanguagesJapanese
English subtitles

Hiro is a Canadian short film, written and directed by Matthew Swanson and released in 2005. [1] It centers on Hiro (Hiro Kanagawa), a shy Japanese insect collector who finds himself thrust into a wild chase to recover a stolen beetle after a chance encounter with a young girl (Vicky Huang). [2]

Contents

The film's dialogue is in Japanese, although Swanson does not personally speak the language. [3] Swanson described it as "liberating" to direct in a language he did not understand. [3]

The film premiered at the 2005 Toronto International Film Festival. [1]

Awards

The film was nominated for a Genie Award for Best Live Action Short Drama. [4]

It also won the award for Best Short Film at the 2006 SXSW Film Festival, [5] and was the first Canadian film to win the "Spirit of Slamdance" Audience Award at the Slamdance Film Festival. [6]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Denys Arcand</span> Canadian film director

Georges-Henri Denys Arcand is a French Canadian film director, screenwriter and producer. His film The Barbarian Invasions won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Film in 2004. His films have also been nominated three further times, including two nominations in the same category for The Decline of the American Empire in 1986 and Jesus of Montreal in 1989, becoming the only French-Canadian director in history whose films have received this number of nominations and, subsequently, to have a film win the award. For The Barbarian Invasions, he received an Academy Award nomination for Best Original Screenplay, losing to Sofia Coppola for Lost in Translation.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Slamdance Film Festival</span> Annual film festival held in Utah, USA

The Slamdance Film Festival is an annual film festival focused on emerging artists. The annual week-long festival takes place in Park City, Utah, in late January and is the main event organized by the year-round Slamdance organization, which also hosts a screenplay competition, workshops, screenings throughout the year and events with an emphasis on independent films with budgets under US$1 million.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Roy Dupuis</span> Canadian actor

Roy Michael Joseph Dupuis is a Canadian actor best known in America for his role as counterterrorism operative Michael Samuelle in the television series La Femme Nikita. In Canada, specifically Quebec, he's known for numerous leading roles he's played in film. He portrayed Maurice Richard on television and in film and Roméo Dallaire in the 2007 film Shake Hands with the Devil.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jean-Marc Vallée</span> Canadian filmmaker (1963–2021)

Jean-Marc Vallée was a Canadian filmmaker, film editor, and screenwriter. After studying film at the Université du Québec à Montréal, Vallée went on to make a number of critically acclaimed short films, including Stéréotypes (1991), Les Fleurs magiques (1995), and Les Mots magiques (1998).

Leah Meyerhoff is an American Student Academy Award-nominated director, producer and screenwriter. She has received attention as the writer and director of the feature film I Believe in Unicorns starring Natalia Dyer and Peter Vack. Her films have screened in over 200 film festivals worldwide and won over a dozen international awards.

The Canadian Screen Award for Best Animated Short is awarded by the Academy of Canadian Cinema and Television to the best Canadian animated short film. Formerly part of the Genie Awards, since 2012 it has been presented as part of the Canadian Screen Awards.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Joe Barrucco</span> Canadian record producer

Joe Barrucco, born in Montreal, Quebec, Canada, is a Canadian record producer, composer and sound editor. In 2000, Barrucco at the age of 19 entered into the music industry as an electronic record producer for "Tycoon Records", Distributed by Sony BMG Music. At present he has a sustainable career as a record producer, sound designer and composer for films, commercials and video games.

Todd Rohal is an American independent filmmaker.

Dusty Mancinelli is a Canadian independent filmmaker from Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Mancinelli is primarily a director of short films. Several of his films have been shown at the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) and other notable film festivals worldwide, winning numerous awards. Since 2017, he has collaborated with Madeleine Sims-Fewer. Their debut feature film Violation was shown at the 2020 Toronto International Film Festival.

When the Day Breaks is a Canadian animated short co-directed by Wendy Tilby and Amanda Forbis and featuring the voice of Canadian singer-songwriter Martha Wainwright singing the titular song.

<i>The Wild Hunt</i> (film) 2009 film by Alexandre Franchi

The Wild Hunt is a 2009 Canadian horror film written, produced, and directed by Alexandre Franchi and starring Mark Antony Krupa, Ricky Mabe, and Kaniehtiio Horn.

Big Girl is a 2005 Canadian short film, written and directed by Renuka Jeyapalan.

<i>Snow and Ashes</i> 2010 Canadian film

Snow and Ashes is a 2010 Canadian drama film directed by Charles-Olivier Michaud. It follows the story of Blaise and David, two war correspondents covering an unnamed conflict in eastern Europe. It was awarded by the Jury Award for Best Narrative at the 2010 Slamdance Film Festival.

Matthew Swanson is a Canadian filmmaker and commercial director from Vancouver, British Columbia. He is most noted for his 2005 short film Hiro, which was a Genie Award nominee for Best Live Action Short Drama at the 27th Genie Awards in 2007.

<i>Son of the Sunshine</i> 2009 Canadian film

Son of the Sunshine is a Canadian supernatural drama film. Directed by Ryan Ward and written by Ward and Matthew Heiti, the film stars Ward as Sonny Johnns, a young man with Tourette syndrome who undergoes an experimental surgical procedure to cure the condition, only to discover that he also loses his supernatural ability to heal others.

Leah Shore is a Brooklyn, NY based artist, animator, and film director best known for her short films: 2010 Sundance Film Festival selection Meatwaffle, 2011 and 2013 SXSW selections BOOBatary and Old Man, and 2014 Slamdance Film Festival selection I Love You So Much.

Milo 55160 is a Canadian short film, directed by David Ostry and released in 2004.

Red is a Canadian short drama film, directed by Maxime Giroux and released in 2005. The film stars Martin Dubreuil as Christian, a man struggling with alcoholism who opens up about his feelings to his mother during a shopping trip to Ikea.

<i>Acadiana</i> (film) 2019 Canadian film

Acadiana is a 2019 Canadian short documentary film directed by Guillaume Fournier, Samuel Matteau and Yannick Nolin. The film explores the changing face of Cajun culture in the United States, and its roots in the Acadian culture of Canada, through a profile of the Crawfish Festival in Breaux Bridge, Louisiana. The film was the second part of a trilogy by the directors about Cajun culture, following Let the Good Times Roll in 2017 and preceding Belle River in 2022.

Desastre is a Canadian short comedy film, directed by Jay Field and released in 2004. A parody of the cultural divide between English and French Canadians, the film stars Kendall Negro as a young boy who is culturally French despite having been born to an American family.

References