Another update on Ren: The Girl with the Mark since my Patreon page for it is no more…
On Thursday 10 September Ash Finn (writer and production designer) and I travelled to Corato in southern Italy for Apulia Web Fest. The first two seasons of Ren hadn’t been entered into this festival; I’d found about it by visiting the website of the Web Series World Cup, which ranks series by the official selections, nominations and awards they get at a number of participating festivals. I figured it was as good a place as any to look for a curated list of festivals that were worth entering and, hey, if it got us a better ranking in the Cup then that’s not bad either!
A few others from the team had considered joining Ash and I, but they didn’t make it in the end. Part of the problem was that Apulia has an unusual policy of announcing their award nominations very gradually over several weeks leading up to the festival. We found out about our last nomination on the actual day of the awards ceremony! I get that you always need content for social media, and nominations are a great way to do it, but it’s sad because some of the people nominated late in the day, like Crina Ciobanu (hair and makeup designer) and Dale Suttle and Jesse Marshall (sound designers) might have booked a flight and come along if they’d known sooner that they were in with a chance of winning.
We arrived in Corato in the early evening. It was hot! And I definitely didn’t figure out the AC in my bedroom properly, because I roasted that night. But the town of Corato, especially the old centre where we were staying and where the festival takes place, was charming. We quickly found our local, To Beer, after walking around in a big circle, and then bungled through getting a pizza at a restaurant, with neither of us speaking a word of Italian. (That was going to a be an issue over the next few days…)
The next morning, after showing up at the wrong library, we were pointed around the corner to the right one, where the festival staff were setting up the registration desk. We mingled with fellow filmmakers including František, the Czech writer-director behind Rock Bottom, and some students who were also part of the Citizen Jury.
Already I can remember almost nothing of that first day of screenings, except that the standard was consistently high. We wondered why the lunch break was two hours, but we found out when we went to one of the restaurants recommended by the festival. They leisurely served us antepasta, then pasta, then desserts, with a carafe of red wine. Definitely slow food. Immediately after, we felt unproductive because the afternoon’s first screening was a film that had been made in a lunch break at the previous year’s festival!
Ren screened at about 4pm, with a total of 11 people in the room including me, Ash and I think two members of staff. Still, those that did see it were very complimentary.
In the evening, across the square from the library, there was a performance called “The Story of Wine”, consisting of dramatic readings, music and a little dance. All in Italian. At one point the lead performer asked questions of the audience. He came up to me and asked me a very long question to which I could only nod. After an awkward pause, festival organiser Michele noticed and saved me by translating.
That first day ended with a bit of mingling over wine and folded pizza slices (a local speciality which I forget the name of), and a few of us extended the evening at To Beer, sitting with our drinks amongst a public art exhibition in the square because the bar itself was too busy. Our circle had grown to include Luli, an Argentinian actor from Apartment A, whose creator, Florencia Sokol, I’d met at Die Seriale once. Ash and I marvelled at the fact that the public artwork could be left unmolested around so many people drinking freely. It would never happen in the UK.
Day two’s screenings were a bit trying. I actually gave up halfway through the afternoon session. Most of the films and series were in Italian without subtitles, which was challenging enough, but a couple in a row were very, very slow and I’m afraid my patience ran out. Apparently I missed a couple of good ones that followed.
In the evening there was a performance of movie soundtracks by a local orchestra. An orchestra with no strings, strangely. Nonetheless they made fine work of Danny Elfman’s Batman, assorted John Williams, Alan Silvestri’s The Avengers, etc. Randomly a sci-fi medley had Phantom of the Opera in the middle of it. They even played Ennio Morricone, which made perfect sense, what with him being Italian, but it was a delightful surprise to me to hear Harmonica Man from Once Upon a Time in the West, a favourite of mine.
The Sunday morning brought with it a festival breakfast, which turned out to be a pastry each and a nice woman desperately trying to keep up with everyone’s coffee requests on a little pod machine. Then there was an interesting walking tour around the town, followed by a tasting of the local delicacy: olive oil. It reminded me of cut grass.
Sadly we missed the students’ film because of these activities running over, though we later watched it on YouTube and were impressed. The remaining screenings were a mixed bag, though Apartment A stood out from the crowd as being particularly entertaining and well made.
By the time we retired to the flat to get ready for the awards ceremony, we had nine nominations: Best Sci-fi Fantasy, Best International Series, Best Scenography (production design), Best Costume Design, Best Makeup, Best Music, Best Sound Design, Best Production and Best VFX. So we were pretty sure we were going to win something, but we weren’t prepared for what actually happened…
Four awards. FOUR. It was a bit embarrassing, to be honest. Happily all of our new friends of the last few days won awards as well, including Apartment A, Rock Bottom, Monkey’s Claw and Illuminagents, whose director I’d hung out with at Die Seriale in 2025. Rock Bottom and Ren also won direct selections to (and Honourable Mentions at) the International Film Festival in Manhattan, taking place in early October.
Given all this success, the amount of drinking that ensued was really quite restrained, though we didn’t call it a night until about 2am. Fittingly I noticed that To Beer, on its receipts at least, was actually Too Beer. Is it too beer to beer?
We were up under five hours later to get a train to Bari Airport and head home. Not only had we bagged five awards (including the Manhattan thing), but we’d completely missed the travel chaos caused by the Air Traffic Control problems just a day or two before we flew out. Result.
AND we rose to second place in the Web Series World Cup… briefly. Then we slipped to third, but still – YAAAY!