Rob Munday
With Mother’s Day falling in May, this month offered the team at S/W a chance to celebrate Mom’s with a playlist dedicated to the experience of Motherhood. In stark contrast, the month also saw the release of the latest season of Netflix NSFW short film anthology Love Death + Robots, which featured the work of alums Patrick Osborne (Pearl) and Alberto Mielgo (The Windshield Wiper).
Film-wise, we championed 22 titles throughout the month including: ghost stories (the creepy dog type and the horny type), though-provoking docs about killer robots, a horror film shot entirely on an iPhone and we even managed to squeeze an early short from filmmaker Robert Eggers into our programming.
TEAM FAVOURITES
The trio of titles making up our Best of the Month picks are a shining example of the diverse approaches often seen in the short film arena. A personal heartfelt doc, a stylish reinvention of a genre and an absurd sketch comedy, these are three very different films, which all stood out for their originality.
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A Nice Little Film About A Nice Little Death by Julia Mendoza Friedman
It feels like every aspiring filmmaker will make a film like this at some point in their career. What sets this documentary apart is how it uses its mundaneness to its advantage, creating an extremely intimate portrait that slowly builds up its emotional effect with humor and honesty. It is in fact a nice little film and again goes to show that you don’t need a big budget or crew to make a convincing short, as long as it manages to connect with the viewer. At the risk of getting to see a lot of tedious and navel-gazing copycats that don’t exude the same magic as A Nice Little Film About A Nice Little Death, I still hope that this film inspires others to consider the advantages of personal non-fiction storytelling. – Georg Csarmann
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Flowers by Dumas Haddad
A bold, striking short full of immaculate production design and intrigue themes, Flowers is an unforgettable introduction to the work of Dumas Haddad – a director I’m sure we’ll be seeing more of. – Rob Munday
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Slow Vine by Glenn Fellman
A very different kind of sketch comedy: absurd and understated in equal measure. There is a precision to the punchlines that just hits in a way that feels unique in an oversaturated online landscape. It certainly doesn’t hurt that is shot with a level of production polish normally only reserved for big budget dramas. – Ivan Kander
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Most Viewed
Maddie by Zane Rubin
A director we’ve been championing on Short of the Week since 2017, Rubin returns to our pages with this tense and uncomfortable short that follows a teenage girl, desperate for attention, into a potentially dangerous situation. With the filmmaker also usually appearing in front of the camera in her films, even without her presence on screen, Maddie still feels unmistakably her own.