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.
Through a composite montage of images from surveillance footage and body-cams, Bill Morrison delivers a chilling political investigation in search of the truth after a Black man is killed by police on the street.
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.
Kevin Biele’s short is full of subtlety: a quiet “no” has never sound so powerful.
Elegant and deeply human, Atsushi Hirai’s Oyu is a carefully constructed homecoming haunted by loss.
In an attempt to tell a universal story, Nienke Deutz’s The Miracle arrives only at vagueness.
Yana Eresina’s family drama on toxic masculinity and femicide forces us to solve puzzle after puzzle.
