Israeli filmmaker Eyal Padan’s animated short film Two Robots has won the Best Mini Film award at the San Francisco Science Fiction Short Film & TV Awards.
The film will be screened on September 13 at the Marina Theatre in San Francisco as part of the festival, which is produced by TasteTV and is devoted to short-form science fiction for film and television.
Two Robots is the first episode of Padan’s animated series Robot Hotel, which is set in a luxury hotel operated entirely by robots. In the episode, a veteran service robot trains a new apprentice, and a low-key rivalry gradually develops between them.
The film contains almost no dialogue, and the story is conveyed primarily through movement, rhythm, and the characters’ looks and gestures. Robot Hotel currently consists of 10 episodes, all written, directed, and produced by Padan. He also created the video sequences using artificial intelligence tools.
Short won several awards at international festivals
The San Francisco prize is the latest in a series of awards Padan has received at international film festivals in recent months.
In May, his short film The Bird, about a friendship between an elderly man and a bird, won Best Super Short Film at the Berlin Indie Shorts Festival.
In June, the second and third episodes of Robot Hotel, Thank You For Your Service and Useless Robots, won the Best Super Short Film award at the East Village New York Film Festival, with Useless Robots chosen to open the festival’s screening evening at the Under St. Marks Theater in Manhattan.
That same month, The Bird won Best Animation Short Film at the Staten Island Summer of Shorts International Film Festival in New York.