AACTA Nominated Short The Moths Will Eat Them Up Has the Oscars in Sight

PRESS RELEASE

Dynamic female filmmaking duo Tanya Modini (Writer, Co-director) and Luisa Martiri (Co-Director/Producer) are on the ride of their careers with their short film THE MOTHS WILL EAT THEM UP continuing to garner international praise via film festivals around the world.

Like moths to a flame, the award nominations keep racking up with the most recent accolades including a nomination for Short Film for outstanding writing achievements   for the 55^th Annual AWGIE Awards plus Best Sound for a Live Action Short ASSG Awards 2022 which accompanies their recent nomination for an AACTA Award for Best Short Film 2022. Also, a recent winner of the Dendy Award for Best Live Action Australian Short Film and the Rouben Mamoulian Award for Best Director at Sydney Film Festival 2022 . “The Moths Will Eat Them Up” also screened at the St Kilda Film Festival.

The film will be screening in Queensland at the Heart Of Gold Short Film Festival in late October and is currently touring as part of the Sydney Travelling Film Festival where it will play next in Townsville, Cairns and Southport in November.  It will also have its International premiere at the Show Me Shorts in New Zealand in October as well as the Aesthetica Short Film Festival in York in the UK in November. Could this be Australia’s Oscar nomination for 2023?

Driven to create film content which allows everyone to authentically explore the deep-seated fears women live with every day in an accessible way has catapulted Modini and Martiri to a much wider film audience. Testament to this is also the signing of an international distribution deal with MagnetFilm in Berlin. 

Inspired by true-life events, Tanya Modini’s personal experience on a train ride home one night, led her to write “The Moths Will Eat Them Up”.  Her interest and insights into this subject have been developed through working in the prevention of violence against women sector for many years.

What should have been a simple train ride home at night for a woman turns into a terrifying game of cat and mouse until an unforeseen force is summoned.  The short film is a psychological thriller that exposes the terror of gendered violence against women, and how some men choose to be bystanders – ignoring other men’s violence as ‘none of their business’. The themes of hope and collective strength also emerge, seen metaphorically in the story as an omnipresent collective women’s spirit of protection and justice.

Luisa Martiri and Tanya Modini first met through the RIDE Short Film Initiative (Respect, Inclusion, Diversity and Equality) led by Unless Pictures and funded by Screen Queensland after Modini’s project was selected for funding in 2021.  Luisa Martiri was interested in creating, thought-provoking cinema that centres diverse, female stories so the pairing of these two dynamic women was kismet. Luisa produced and co-directed the short film alongside writer & co-director Tanya Modini.

“Our desire is to contribute to a more diverse film industry, so we crewed and cast with a majority of females from a variety of backgrounds. Given the subject matter of the film, we felt it was even more important the female perspective was front and centre from beginning to the end of the process. We are proud of the fact we had a 65% female crew and provided opportunities to emerging female creatives.“ said Modini & Martiri.

Festivals