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.
Zhang Dalei’s throwback to the 1990 Asian Games is inherently enigmatic yet rooted in ambiguity, leaving the viewer to fill in the emotional gaps.
Ary Zara’s intimate, beguiling portrait of a trans sex worker takes trans* storytelling in new directions.
Though devoid of any sound, Asteriòn is an exceptionally visceral and vivid cinematic experience.
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.
Through exploring faces and expressions, Dutch filmmaker Malu Janssen focuses on the consequences and not the reasons of witchcraft accusations. In Barlebas, women are singing to the rhythm of resistance.
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.
Photos from a family album reveal a city that perhaps used to exist. Sara Rajaei anchors these images not fully in reality but instead extracts the poetry from them.
Not a skateboard story, but a skateboard-inspired film: Cul-de-Sac urges characters and viewers to contemplate life, whatever that entails.
Shot in vivid 16mm, Barcelona native Christian Avilés turns a piercing gaze on young British holidaymakers, creating a reverie of surreal seduction out of the real-life phenomenon of balconing.
In the north of Colombia, a group of queer activists use extravagant performative actions to denounce the disastrous exploitation by the country’s largest coal mine.
Mohamed Bourouissa visualises the escape of the mind when it is not possible to escape with the body in this compelling short film about everyday racism.
Exploring empathy and guilt, Oscar Bøe’s protagonist’s growing self-awareness mirrors the cultural blind spots surrounding sexual assault.
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.
An exploration of the emotional divide between fiction and reality in the American sitcom, Philip Thomson’s Living Reality questions how we consume images at large.
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.
Naomi Pacifique’s new short film dwells in melancholy and unlocks a form of intimacy that is unlike anything else we’ve seen bodies share on screen.
Two nun-like identical twins go silently through life in an almost unconscious state, portrayed by two elegant actors that patiently wait for their portraits to be drawn.
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.
In an attempt to adapt two myths at once, Isabella Margara’s short fails to live up to its premise and instead drowns it under a convoluted mix of different narrative planes.
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.
Aziz Zoromba’s Simo offers insights into the dynamics of a culturally diverse family, but leaves out the most meaningful conversations.
A sober celebration of the silly: Håkon Anton Olavsen invites us into the silliness of a ridiculous situation, turning a film into a not-film.
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.
