Each year, the world’s most beloved movie stars and burgeoning filmmakers flock to France for the Cannes International Film Festival. The festival has become one of the most highly regarded showcases for every genre of excellence in film across the globe.

Tampa will be represented at Cannes this year, thanks to the work of University of Tampa students Travis Misarti and Alexandra (Ali) DiGiacomo. Their short film, Tea Time, will be featured in the Short Film Corner at the festival.

Running just under five-minutes long, the short (about a heist that takes an odd, humorous turn) was written and directed by Misarti and co-directed by DiGiacomo. Although the two are already building healthy filmmaking resumes, they are surprisingly young – Misarti a 20 – year – old junior majoring in film and DiGiacomo a 21 – year – old senior majoring in communications.

The duo’s (who have been working together for almost two years) adventure began when they produced Tea Time for Campus MovieFest at UT. The annual festival gives student filmmakers the opportunity to compete internationally with shorts under five minutes long that were filmed in less than a week.

According to DiGiacomo, it only took seven hours to film Tea Time. However, the Quentin Tarantino-inspired idea had been marinating in Misarti’s imagination for some time.

“You can do all the pre-production work before that week, you just can’t film anything,” Misarti said. “So, I actually wrote the script over winter break and sent it to Ali.”

He said that the cinematography of Alejandro González Iñárritu’s Birdman, which won Best Picture at this year’s Academy Awards, greatly influenced the production of Tea Time.

“We like to work with long-takes, filming without edits,” Misarti said. “There are very few edits in the short. Pretty much the entire scene was all one shot.”

“We filmed it on top of a car,” DiGiacomo added. “We were both hanging off of it.”

Misarti said that he wrote all of the parts specifically for the actors he wanted to cast. Charles Doubleday-Potts, Alix Honda and David Rinere are all members of the Delta Kappa Alpha Cinema Fraternity (of which Misarti is a founding member). Kris Kozlowski has appeared in some of Misarti’s other films, and Misarti found him in a casting book at UT.

Last July, Tea Time was selected to compete in Hollywood for the international string of the Campus MovieFest. From there, Misarti and DiGiacomo were selected along with only 26 other students for Cannes consideration. After applying, Misarti and DiGiacomo were informed that their short would be screened at the festival.

The real-life couple has also started a production company called Forza Coppia, fittingly meaning “power couple” in Italian. The two hope to learn from and connect with fellow filmmakers at the festival.

“A big part of it is promoting your filmmaking, especially since we are so young, and we want to break into the business,” DiGiacomo said. “[Cannes] is for networking with other filmmakers who are going to be there.”

While they are incredibly excited about the opportunity to experience Cannes, Misarti and DiGiacomo have had to contemplate the hefty expense of traveling to France. The trip will cost the two a total of $10,000 – nothing to shrug at considering that they are both full-time students (DiGiacomo will graduate on May 9, the day before they leave for Cannes).

The pair has set up a GoFundMe account where donations of any size can be made to help them represent the Tampa film community at Cannes. Misarti said that he and DiGiacomo are thankful for all of the support they’ve received from the community and UT so far.

“We hope that we can inspire local and student filmmakers to never believe anything is out of their reach,” Misarti said. “It is very exciting to be a part of the next generation of filmmakers, and we hope to network with many other student filmmakers in Cannes that we can collaborate with in the future.”

This article appears in Apr 23-29, 2015.