The team from Aggressive, the New York-based, design-driven studio, are heading to Montreal for the Canadian premiere of their award-winning short film Escape Attempt, which will debut at the Fantasia International Film Festival on July 21st, 2024. The short is directed by Grammy Award-winning duo Dan Shapiro and Alex Topaller, the winning music video directing team behind the 2008 Latin Grammy Award for Best Short Form Music Video, Juanes “Me Enamora.”
Escape Attempt is an epic science-fiction thriller starring esteemed Polish actors Andrzej Chyra (The Debt, Cracow Monsters), Piotr Witkowski (Lesson Plan) and is based on the 1962 novel of the same name by acclaimed science fiction writers Arkady and Boris Strugatsky. The U.S./Poland co-production also stars Anna Burnett (Outlander, Darkest Hour) and Ieuan Coombs (Older Gods).
In Escape Attempt, a soldier escaping a WWII concentration camp, finds himself on an unknown planet in a distant future only to discover a frozen gulag controlled by a brutal alien race. The short film, which had its world premiere in competition at the Sitges International Film Festival, has won numerous awards internationally including the ‘Navigator Pirx Award for Best Sci-Fi Film’ at the Tallinn Black Nights HÕFF Festival, ‘Best Sci-Fi’ and ‘Grand Prize’ awards at FilmQuest. The film is debuting to Canadian audiences for the first time in the International Science-Fiction Short Film Showcase.
“When we first decided to create Escape Attempt, we envisioned it as a warning. But sadly, over the course of our production of the film, the horrible events unfolding around the world have turned it from an imagining of a possible future, into a dire commentary on the present,” says co-directors Shapiro and Topaller. “At the film’s core lies a fundamental question about history and the nature of humanity: is change possible? Can humans shift the way they behave, or are we forever condemned to re-enact past tragedies?”
Escape Attempt was directed by Dan Shapiro and Alex Topaller, written by Academy Award-nominated screenwriter Christina Lazaridi (Nobody’s Watching), Dan Shapiro, Alex Topaller, produced by Lukasz Tomasz Koltunowicz, executive producers Are Jacek Kulczycki, Daniel Shapiro, Alex Topaller and cinematography by Pils Kajetan.
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