After shooting his first short film 'Dimensions', Bermudian Neysan Sobhani would have been happy to have it screened at just one film festival.

But since its release, the experimental short film has garnered 21 Official Selections and won two Best Short Film awards at international film festivals in five different countries, including the UK, Australia, Costa Rica and the US.

Mr Sobhani, married to Bermudian Elizabeth Walker, said he was “blown away” by the reception the film has received.

Currently a professor in the Faculty of Law at Beijing University, he started dabbling in film and photography as a hobby years ago.

“I had a really great mentor who is a cinematographer who helped me out by teaching me some things and we took it from there,” Mr Sobhani said.

“Then it was the encouragement from friends who always knew I was interested in film who kept telling me to write something, so I did.”

He happened to be around “the right people at the right time” and was able to shoot 'Dimensions' in a day and a half.

Editing, however, was much more of a challenge and it took four months to hone about five minutes of film.

Mr Sohani said he now has “a new-found respect” for people in this industry after experiencing how time consuming editing, colour correcting and post production can be. Luckily that process has proved to be a little easier for his latest short film, 'Passages', which is the second part in the 'Dimensions' trilogy.

'Passages' recently received its first official acceptance to the New York Indie Film Festival, which is considered to be quite competitive.

The trilogy tells the story of two young brothers struggling to come to terms with a major life event. Rather than communicating as ordinary children do, the audience soon finds out that these boys can speak about important adult themes and topics.

The first part in the series 'Dimensions' was named Best Experimental Short Film last year at the Fastnet International Short Film Festival in Ireland. It later went on to win the Best Short Film accolade in Los Angeles at the acclaimed Noor International Film Festival in November.

“Other memorable highlights include being nominated in seven categories at the World Music and Independent Film Festival and having the film screened at the AT&T Center in Los Angeles as part of the celebrated NewFilmMakers Series in Los Angeles,” Mr Sobhani said.

But the greatest highlight in this whole process was having Grammy Award-winning artist Macklemore promote the film on his own website and social media, the filmmaker said.

He was overjoyed when he got permission from American rapper Macklemore and producer Ryan Lewis to use their music as the backing soundtrack to 'Dimensions'.

Mr Sobhani said: “Macklemore's track is highly critical to the film. When the project commenced I wasn't sure that permission would be given, but we filmed it anyway.

“Upon the film's completion I was not only fortunate to receive their blessing, but towards the middle of last year they also promoted and featured the film on their own website: macklemore.com — all of this was quite exciting.

“It's a testament to the generosity of spirit of this talented hip-hop group that they support others in their creative endeavours.”

Mr Sobhani said it was wonderful that these days amateur filmmakers like himself didn't need expensive tools to get a foot into the film industry doorway.

All you need is a great idea and a way to execute it, he said.

“We used a Canon SLR camera to shoot these films and a special anamorphic lens to give it a cinematic feel.

“I think this is a very interesting time with viral media,” he continued. “There's a lot of it out there, for instance every minute the Chinese version of YouTube has about six hours of video uploaded onto it. A lot of the stuff that's out there isn't very good in terms of content and delivery and truth be told I was tired of just seeing junk.

“I wanted to introduce elevated topics and themes in a short film format. We're so used to seeing feature films, but I think in this day and age short films of five to ten minutes have proven to be really thought provoking.”

Mr Sobhani's film wasn't selected to be screened in Bermuda, but he hopes locals will watch the film for themselves.

Visit www.YouTube.com and search for 'Dimensions Soulpancake'.