The T-Shirt

Most short films manage to pick up three or four awards if they are really lucky/good. Filmmaker Hossein Martin Fazeli must be running out of space in his house for accolades for Tricko (T-Shirt), which has managed to pick up a whopping 30 on the festival circuit - including five 'gold dust' audience awards which in many ways must be so much more rewarding than pure critical acclaim. All this and he isn't even listed on IMDB yet... surely an oversight soon to be rectified.

Fazeli keeps his situation simple but the psychology complex in this brief story of 'cultural exchange' gone wrong. An American enters a shop, seeing the shopkeeper is a baseball fan - complete with Stars And Stripes - a conversation ensues, revealing that the pair may not be as culturally different as had first appeared, but when the T-shirt of the title makes an appearance, the atmosphere changes for the worse.

As a variation on the cautionary warning not to judge a book by its cover this punchy short also manages to cover all sorts of ground concerning internationalism, fundamentalism and still find time twist the audiences perceptions more times than you would imagine possible in less than ten minutes. Marian Mitas and Andrey Kovac also have talent to burn in the roles of the central protagonists, shifting their mood as subtly as the script.

The use of black and white film suits the drama playing out, but it is Fazeli's ability to draw such a complex picture in so few scenes which is at the crux of the film's success. On his website he lists four commandments of filmmaking. Although this sounds a tad pretentious, the list includes the importance of having something to say, being fun to make and watch and the avoidance of stereotypical and simplistic approaches - sage advice for any filmmaker and strictly stuck to here.