Hundreds of short films are released on the festival circuit yearly. We review those that spoke most to us here.
Elegant and deeply human, Atsushi Hirai’s Oyu is a carefully constructed homecoming haunted by loss.
Based on the real-life story of one of the filmmaker’s friends, Burul sheds a light on the brutal practice of bride kidnapping and amplifies the voices of oppressed Kyrgyz girls.
Refusing any coherence, the campy DIY touches in In-Hyuk Jung’s latest alien-invading sci-fi action-romance are commemorative of 90s New Queer Cinema: feeling out of place is inherently queer.
A father takes his son to the funfair on Halloween. What should be the stuff of childhood dreams becomes, instead, the therapy material of adolescent trauma in Rachel Walden’s gut-punch roadtrip.
No hollow performances of masculinity to mask the realities of grief in Guillermo García López’s Roma family tale. By exploring insecurities, his coming-of-age story becomes a metaphysical quest for reassurance.
All the markers of artfulness seem to be in place, and yet this self-proclaimed study of empathy quickly wears thin.
A constant bombardment of stimuli, Stephen Lopez’s dystopian talking fish bromance is all the more interesting for its political undercurrents.
Director-actor Kayije Kagame takes control of her own narrative, shifting our perspectives on Black agency in this blend of magic and social realism.
Kevin Biele’s short is full of subtlety: a quiet “no” has never sound so powerful.
Not a skateboard story, but a skateboard-inspired film: Cul-de-Sac urges characters and viewers to contemplate life, whatever that entails.
Olga Kosanović sheds light on an immigrant’s reality in present-day Austria, a land where an Eastern European individual is forced to, figuratively speaking, move mountains to endure.
In this Finnish sci-fi love story, Ingmar Bergman’s Scenes from a Marriage meets Philip K. Dick’s philosophies on the existence of android souls.
In his satirical take on reality TV, Sonny Calvento blends campy imagery with melodramatic plot twists.
Francesco Sossai builds a queasy claustrophobia in the neo-giallo The Birthday Party.
Portuguese filmmaker Jorge Jácome crafts something fresh and innovative in the beautifully restrained Shrooms.
Yana Eresina’s family drama on toxic masculinity and femicide forces us to solve puzzle after puzzle.
