Kolkata based Ghost Animation has added several feathers to its cap. After being nominated for WADE at Annecy 2020, there have been a number of festivals in which the animated short film on climate change has been officially selected. Not only that, but it also won an award at the Animayo Las Palmas festival, Gran Canaria which is the qualifiers for Academy Awards.
The selections so far are : ITFS Stuttgart, Palm Springs ShortFest, Krakow Film Festival, Odense Film Festival, SICAF Seoul, Supertoons Croatia Kadoma, Brooklyn Film Festival, Kadoma Film Festival Osaka, and Animayo Las Palmas, Gran Canaria.
WADE bagged the award for ‘Best Art Direction’ at Animayo and the ‘Audience Award’ at Brooklyn Film festival.
Ecstatic on the win, WADE co-director Kalp Sanghvi told AnimationXpress, “Extremely extremely delighted! These would be the very first awards WADE has received in its festival circuit. We were thrilled to find out about this. We congratulate all the other winners and fellow filmmakers, and hope to meet them next year at the festival.”
Besides the wins, both Sanghvi and his co-director and creator Upamanyu Bhattacharyya are on cloud nine especially for the selections at Palm Springs Short Fest.
They shared, “We’re really delighted with our most recent selections, especially Palm Springs Short Fest. One of the best festivals across the world for short films. So happy that WADE is now a part of the festival among some brilliant filmmakers. We still can’t believe it! Really happy that the festivals around the world are willing to provide a platform for spreading the message about our climate change futures.”
WADE is an eye-opening animated short that gives a reality check about the adverse effects of climate change. It showcases a climate change nightmare set in Kolkata, few years hence, ravaged by sea level rise, where a group of humans and an ambush of tigers face off on the flooded streets.
After the devastating cyclone Amphan wreaked havoc in Bengal and Odisha on 20 May, ravaging the entire World’s largest mangrove delta, Sunderbans, WADE possibly might come true in the near future. Even after so many days, most parts of the Sunderbans lies under water, with its people and fauna helpless.
WADE shows the horrifying outcome of all our actions if we are still not woke about the catastrophic consequences of climate change and take Nature for granted.