Arabic-Language Short From German School Wins VES ‘Student Oscar’

The Visual Effects Society named an international short film – A Calling. From the Desert. To the Sea. – shot in Arabic by a team from Germany’s FilmAkademie Baden-Wurttemberg as winner of its so-called “Student Oscar” for outstanding visual effects in a student project.

A Calling tells the story of two sisters fleeing their desert home in search of a better life. The younger sister is haunted by nightmares of a desert ghoul, representative of their inner fears, who attacks them before they make their way to freedom.

A Calling was written and directed by Murad Abu Eisheh. It took two years to complete, and required 30 artists led by VFX Supervisor Mario Bertsch to deliver 28 visual-effects shots for the film. Other key participants included Compositing Lead Lukas Löffler, Rigging Technical Director Lukas Kapp, and Technical Director Pascal Schober. Lennard Fricke and Max Pollmann oversaw VFX production.

“It’s a huge honor for our crew, who worked tirelessly on this project, as well as Filmakademie Baden-Württemberg, the university we represent,” said Fricke. “We had a blast working on the film as a team and learning together, and we can’t wait to see what new opportunities it unlocks as we advance our careers.”

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Chief Marketing Officer Dara Treseder, who presented the award, said A Calling was an example of the high-quality international projects that can result when film and VFX students around the globe have access to powerful cloud-based creative tools. The team behind A Calling used Autodesk software packages Maya and Arnold in making the effects.

“It’s so exciting,” Treseder said. “It shows how when you give technology to artists, the creativity shines through.”

Other finalists for the award included Boom (Romain Augier, Charles Di Cicco, Gabriel Augerai, and Laurie Pereira De Figueiredo), Macula (Hady Abou Ghazale, Lothaire Rialhe, Marta Rodriguez-Noriega Nava, and Jules Machicot) and Maronii (Maxime Guitet, Dimitri Allonneau, Lucas Plata, and Ngoc Mai Nguyen).

The 32-year-old Filmakademie is part of a cluster of entertainment-focused public schools in Ludwigsberg, in Germany’s southwestern corner.

VES has more than 4,000 members working in visual-effects film, TV, games and other sectors across more than 40 countries.