Prince Edward Island International Film Festival 2008

The Same House is a short film that speaks to a generation for which growing up is optional. Lee is a girl so attached to her childhood memories and friends that she cannot accept their life changes or her own. In a desperate effort to resurrect childhood adventures she retreats to her family cottage dragging her two closest and oldest friends with her. Convinced this weekend away will confirm her opinion that maturity is unnecessary, she tries everything to ignore impending adulthood and encourage silly games. But reality can only be pushed aside temporarily. Issues of marriage and career continue to tear Lee away from her careless winter wonderland and force her to make a decision about whether she too is ready for adulthood.

In the summer of 1898, sixteen year-old Sara Smith and her twin brother, Adam, grieving over the recent death of their mother, and now forced to live with their legal guardian, Aunt Marie, arrive in the idyllic community of Avonlea on Prince Edward Island . The lush green meadows are dotted with wild flowers, and the bright noon sun warms the sandy yellow beaches and sparkles off the surface of the ocean beyond. Sara embraces the stunning natural beauty around her as an escape from the sorrow she feels. Sara and Adam immediately cross swords with their Aunt Marie, and turn her home into a storm of emotional turmoil, until they discover that their mother and Marie were both in love with the same man, their father. They feel sympathy for Marie and understand her bitterness at being left single and alone. Sara briefly forgets her own sorrows when she meets Nick White, the smartest, best-looking young man in Avonlea. Sara is smitten, but her ecstasy ends in anguish when she discovers that Nick and his best friend Josh have made a bet – that Nick can make Sara fall in love with him. The story of the bet and Sarah’s feelings for Nick spreads like a brush fire, and Sara ends up heartsick and humiliated. The only safe harbor for Sara’s broken heart is to immerse herself in her passion for writing. While she tries to mend her own unhappiness, she also determines to make her Aunt a happier human being by matching her up with the schoolteacher, Will Hammond. Sara’s audacity and scheming on this project is a remarkable success, in spite of the efforts of Marie’s best friend to undo the match-up between Will and Marie. But Sara finds that healing herself is not as easy. Although Nick’s sister befriends her, and Nick apologizes profusely for his behavior, Sara can only forgive – but not forget – his betrayal of her. And yet, she still feels drawn to him. When Sara suffers a serious blow to the head in a boating accident, Nick rescues her, but she sinks into a deep coma, only waking the next morning. Even though she knows that Nick has saved her life, she rejects him when he tells her he is in love with her. When they graduate and go to college, Sara turns her focus to the book she is writing, and tries to maintain a precarious “friendship” with Nick, until Teddy, a young executive from her intended publishing house takes an interest in her. Then Nick leaves the college and enrolls elsewhere. Sara returns for a visit to Avonlea, but the success she achieves in getting her book published will not fill the emptiness in her life, especially since she has learned that Nick plans to marry someone else. Then, when Teddy proposes to her, even though he seems to be an ideal candidate for marriage, Sara realizes that must turn him down. She really does love Nick, who is about to leave Avonlea to return to college. In haste she rushes to the train station and arrives just as the train is pulling out, but she sees Josh, Nick’s friend, and hands him a copy of her book to give to Nick. Later, walking along the beach, she looks up and sees Nick striding toward her, with her book in his hand

When three young boys come across the body of a mythical sea creature on the beach, they are drawn into its charms. But when their curiosity gets the best of them, one of the boys is faced with a tough decision after realizing that something is not quite what it seems.The Mermaid is a short story about three boys' macabre rite of passage.

A cinematic, non-fiction ghost story. An evocative personal tale featuring the last generation of Gaelic storytellers on Scotland’s Isle of Skye. “Imagine a film where time crosses over. Imagine a film populated by wise old taletellers who can call the dead to life. Imagine Bergman meeting Beckett on some ghostly, fog-bound track on the Isle of Skye, Scotland. Imagine a film which has everything to do with the sudden, quick passages of our lives.” - Peter Wintonick, Executive Producer “Step into the rugged vermillion landscapes of Scotland’s remote Isle of Skye and meet Donald Angus MacLean, one of the last of a generation raised with the Gaelic oral tradition rather than electricity and television. “Don Angie” is an old charmer, a man of the church who has listened with an open and curious mind to a lot of “terribly strange stories” in his long life. The camera roves with him through gorgeously shot craggy hillsides to the sites of these spine-tingling stories of spectres, ghost cars, death foretold and the “second sight.” This softly painted portrait of a vanishing era spins an irresistible tale that becomes a moving study of life and mortality.” - Gisèle Gordon, Hot Docs Programmer

Some of the best short films from around the world saved up for a finale you wont soon forget. Then, Sit back, relax and enjoy PEI's best actors perfoming select scenes from the five finalist screenplays submitted to the Prince Edward Island International Film Festival. Following the Finale Shorts and Script Reading, the 2008 Prince Edward Island International Film Festival Winning Films will be announced with a Trophy/Plaque Presentation.

Set in rural South India, a place where social barriers are built stronger than fort walls, VANAJA explores the chasm that divides classes as a young girl struggles to come of age. Vanaja (Mamatha Bhukya) is the 14 year-old daughter of a poor, low caste fisherman, struggling with dwindling catches and mounting debt. When a sooth-sayer predicts that she will be a great dancer one day, she goes to work in the house of the local landlady, Rama Devi (Urmila Dammannagari), in hopes of learning Kuchipudi dance while earning a keep.She is hired as a farmhand, and her vivacious ways and spunk soon catch the landlady’s eye, eventually securing her the landlady’s mentorship – first in music, and then in dance. Vanaja excels at the art, and seems to be on a steadily ascending path when Shekhar (Karan Singh), Rama Devi’s 23 year old son – handsome, muscular and rather insecure, returns from the US to run for local political elections.Sexual chemistry is ignited between Shekhar and Vanaja (still a minor at 15), as flirtation and innuendo bloom. But, the situation suddenly turns ugly when Vanaja’s superior intellect pits her against Shekhar in a public incident which ultimately humiliates him in front of his mother. Matters escalate, spiraling downwards and she is pitched into a tale of class, family and animus from which there is only one escape.

This action-fairytale features a puppet by the winners of last year's Petit Rail d'Or at Cannes, the OSCAR nominated Clyde Henry Productions as well as songs from ultra-cool garage rockers The King Khan & BBQ Show.This story begins when a young girl named Alex accidentally treads on an ill-natured talking crab who, with a wave of his magic wand, transforms her into a mermaid condemning her to the sea. After a fight for her life against three surly fishermen, Alex learns the hard way how to take care of business.

Finalist for script competition. VERA, by Caitlin McCarthy (see above), is an adapted historical drama about Vera Laska, a Catholic teen who defied statistics and lasted three years as a Czech Resistance fighter (instead of the average six months); survived Auschwitz as a political prisoner; and escaped the Nazis during a death march.