'Dalia' by Alumni Wins Special Jury Prize at Euregion Film Festival

By
Felix Van Kann
March 31, 2021

Dalia, a short film directed by alumnus Brúsi Ólason '20, written by alumna Leticia Andrea Akel Escárate '18, and produced by alumnus Kári Úlfsson '20, won the Special Jury Prize at the Euregion Film Festival in the Netherlands, where it screened in February. Ólason was also interviewed about the film by CineSud. You can watch it here.

In Dalia, a six year old boy of divorced parents spends a weekend at his dad's farm. Not knowing how to connect with his son, the father goes about his day working and treating the boy as any other farmhand. When they come across the mother's seriously wounded horse they finally find a way to connect as they carefully go through the process of putting the horse out of its misery.

In addition, the film’s writer Akel Escárate has been selected to participate in the Santiago International Film Festival's Fiction Lab in Chile with her feature project Shadow, a family drama with strong psychological thriller undertones. She also recently directed a commercial for the FEMCINE Women's Film Festival.

Brúsi Ólason is an Icelandic director, screenwriter and editor, based in New York. Ólason grew up on a farm just outside of the town of Selfoss in the south of Iceland. Before moving to New York, Ólason worked at the Icelandic National Theatre. In 2017, he founded the production company Kvarki Films with Kari Ulfsson. He has directed five short films and his film Victoria showed at the Toronto International Film Festival in 2018.  

Akel Escárate is a Chilean director and screenwriter. In 2009, Leticia wrote and directed the short films The Couch and Escarate, winner of the National Talent Award at SANFIC Santiago International Film Festival. In 2010 her short film Rule Number One received the Best Narrative Short Film Award at FEMCINE, along with Best Actor Award and Jury Special Prize at Ovalle Film Festival. She also wrote and directed the short films Life Coach and Premonition, which won the Cacho Pallero Award at Huesca International Film Festival along with three other Special Jury Mentions, and screened at SIFF, Aspen International Film Festival, and Palm Springs ShortFest. Akel Escárate just finished her sixth short film, which is now expanding into a feature-film titled Shadow.

Kari Úlfsson is an independent film producer currently living in Reykjavik, Iceland. Úlfsson recently graduated with a Film MFA in Creative Producing from Columbia University in New York with a focus on marketing, distribution and development. Growing up in the environmental sciences and having priorly worked as a park ranger, he longs to combine these two fields—film and nature. 

Euregion Film Festival offers a multi-day festival experience with the best films from all over the world, an award show, workshops, seminars and more. The program contains selections of films from all over the world. Euregion Film Festival aims to connect professionals, filmmakers and the public in an international context in the unique Crossborder region of the Netherlands: the province of Limburg, surrounded by Belgium and Germany and close to Luxembourg and France.

Watch the trailer for Dalia below. 

Dalia - Trailer