Country Iran
A Bit of Light is Iranian cinema in its most recognisable register: sombre, calm, atmospheric, and quietly political. Ali Asgari's drama is a restrained, well-acted piece about a man at the end of his tether, and while I admired its control and its performances, its studied emotional
Country France
Here is a short that understands the oldest rule in horror: what you do not see is almost always scarier than what you do. The Last Snow, Rodolphe Bouquet's tense little French creature feature, is really impressive for its length, a lean, dread-soaked chiller that had me
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Few premises this festival season grabbed me quite as quickly as the one at the heart of Prince, Federico Borgia's solo-debut feature: a wealthy woman leaves her entire estate to her Afghan Hound, and her human heirs can only inherit once the dog is dead. What follows
Country Uruguay
There is a wickedly good premise at the heart of Federico Borgia's Prince, and a pedigree cast to carry it, but this Uruguayan dark comedy never quite sinks its teeth in. It is a perfectly pleasant watch, handsomely made and nicely performed, yet for a film built on
Country United Kingdom
There is a particular kind of childhood lie that spirals so far beyond your control that you end up trapped inside it, and I Was Kidnapped captures that sinking, guilty feeling just about perfectly. Dhananjay Barangule's animated short is a warm, funny and nicely crafted piece of autobiography,
Country United Kingdom
There is a very specific feeling at the heart of Hindsight that I recognised instantly, and it is the thing that carries Remi R.M. Moses' short further than its slender eleven minutes probably should. This is a warm, nicely observed little film about a young man, his first
Country Australia
Every so often a short comes along with a premise so neat you wonder why no one had done it before, and A Grief Encounter is one of those. James Ashley McLaren's Australian short is a funny, tender and genuinely original little film about a lonely taxidermist and
Country United Kingdom
Fishbrain is a stunner. Max Vanderspuy's short is a grim, briny little nightmare about love curdling into resentment, and it builds to some of the most impressive body horror I have seen in any film this year, let alone one this length. It is nasty, tender and genuinely
Country United Kingdom
Every so often a short film takes a single, slightly mad idea and commits to it so completely that you cannot help but admire the nerve of the thing. Sophia Di Martino's All Yours is one of those, an eight-minute piece of domestic body horror that is
Country Pakistan
I came to Lali as a card-carrying Joyland obsessive, and perhaps that was always going to be a problem. Sarmad Sultan Khoosat's darkly comic Pakistani fever dream, made by many of the same people who gave us that modern masterpiece, is a handsome, ambitious and frequently intriguing
Country United Kingdom
I will admit it, Geronto did not win me over straight away. For its opening stretch I thought I knew exactly what it was: a short about two men meeting by chance and going to bed together, and little more. I was wrong, and by the end this quiet, melancholy
Country United Kingdom
You have to admire a film that can take an idea this daft and make you feel something with it. Adrian Maganza's Fantasies of a Rescue Dummy is one of the more genuinely original shorts I have come across, a hybrid of live action and animation that asks
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