Hundreds of short films are released on the festival circuit yearly. We review those that spoke most to us here.
All the markers of artfulness seem to be in place, and yet this self-proclaimed study of empathy quickly wears thin.
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.
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.
Not a skateboard story, but a skateboard-inspired film: Cul-de-Sac urges characters and viewers to contemplate life, whatever that entails.
A constant bombardment of stimuli, Stephen Lopez’s dystopian talking fish bromance is all the more interesting for its political undercurrents.
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.
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.
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.
Kevin Biele’s short is full of subtlety: a quiet “no” has never sound so powerful.
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.
Director-actor Kayije Kagame takes control of her own narrative, shifting our perspectives on Black agency in this blend of magic and social realism.
Elegant and deeply human, Atsushi Hirai’s Oyu is a carefully constructed homecoming haunted by loss.
In his satirical take on reality TV, Sonny Calvento blends campy imagery with melodramatic plot twists.
Portuguese filmmaker Jorge Jácome crafts something fresh and innovative in the beautifully restrained Shrooms.
Francesco Sossai builds a queasy claustrophobia in the neo-giallo The Birthday Party.
Yana Eresina’s family drama on toxic masculinity and femicide forces us to solve puzzle after puzzle.
