Céline Roustan
The film opens on a horse’s skull! It’s right there in the logline, but it still produces quite an effect. This skull is what the protagonist is desperately looking for, and while the reason isn’t clear at the outset, he will go to any lengths to get his hands on one. From this peculiar jumping-off point, director Siôn Marshall-Waters embarks us on a wild ride as we tag along with this man, pursuing a strange, maybe dangerous, quest. Perfectly unsettling and delightfully confusing, the dark-comedic atmosphere of Pen Mari was more than enough to draw me in.
The premise has roots in history. Written by Callum Mitchell, the film draws from the Welsh folk tradition of Mari Lwyd and of Montol, the Cornish winter solstice festival. Marshall-Waters explains that “based on a true story, the film interplays the banal and the surreal, setting a historic folkloric ritual in the social fringes of contemporary rural Britain”.
What results is an experimental folk-horror, which strikes us as a novel classification, and Marshall-Waters intriguing choices toward the material make Pen Mari simultaneously puzzling and captivating. Experimental aspects enhance the horror beats of the film effectively, and while the atmosphere evokes persistent uncertainty over the presence of danger, the ever-present need for the skull serves as the story’s lodestone.
The short film is split into two parts: the first being the quest for the skull, the second the reason for it. Marshall-Waters creates a contrast between the two halves that shapes the narrative structure of the film and brings an undeniable satisfaction to audiences. From the way the two sections are shot to the way they are edited, the shift is undeniable both in how they look, but also in the feelings they evoke.
Shot by Ruben Woodin Dechamps on 16mm, the film’s visual flair is one of the film’s great strengths, and integral to the tone of the narrative. With beautiful and carefully constructed frames, part one invites us into the desperate POV of the protagonist—how isolated he feels by the responsibility, how anxious he is about his quest. The second immerses us into the chaos of celebration with the community—equally unsettling, but in a different way. Marshall-Waters reveals that the film was “partly filmed at the community event that inspired it”, which contributes to the authentic depiction of the joyful excitement palpable through the screen.
Pen Mari had its world premiere at the 2025 edition of Fantastic Fest, and was also selected at Encounters, Glasgow, and Leeds. It premieres online today via WePresent, along with a great q&a with Siôn that we suggest checking out. With such a strange and singular film experience, we, like any viewer, want even more context behind this jewel of a short!