Silent But Deadly, the short, Silent Era-inspired comedic film about a pair of Imperial Storm Troopers enforcing George Lucas’s plan to rid the world of Star Wars fan websites, will be screened for an international audience at the 2005 Cannes Film Festival in May.
Representatives of Cannes’ Short Film Corner program selected “Silent But Deadly” along with a handful of other shorts that have been finalists in the Lucasfilm/Atomfilms Star Wars Fan Film Awards since the contest’s launch in 2002. “Silent But Deadly”, written, produced and directed by Northern New Jersey natives Jeff Cioletti and Lou Tambone, received an honorable mention in the Spirit of Fandom category and was the runner-up in the Audience Choice category in 2002’s inaugural competition. The following year Cioletti and Tambone’s sequel, Silent But Deadly 2 won the award in the Spirit of Fandom category. The filmmakers completed the final film of the trilogy, Silent But Deadly 3, last year.
“The Cannes announcement came out of left field,” notes an ecstatic Cioletti. “It’s a completely unexpected honor for a pair of Jersey boys who, with zero budget and only a 12-hour window to shoot on an unbearably frigid day in early 2002, managed to put together a film that not only has made hundreds of thousands laugh on the Web, but now gets to screen at Cannes.”
Tambone was astounded when he heard the news. “To say we were excited and very proud to learn about the screening of ‘Silent But Deadly’ at Cannes the same year that ‘Revenge of the Sith’ is making its debut would be a massive understatement,” a thrilled Tambone says. “It’s a grand honor, and one we won’t ever forget.”
