The Sundance London Film Festival 2018 has come to an end and it was a great year for shorts, with the hometown filmmakers showing a strong presence in the UK Shorts program and the Short Film Tour presenting an enticing mix of comedies and dramas. Personal favorites included Niki Lindroth von Bahr’s Min Börda (The Burden), as well as actress Anna Margaret Hollyman’s debut as writer/director Maude and Kamrau Bila’s NY Times op-doc Baby Brother.

So if you have the opportunity, be sure to catch one of the screenings when the program comes to a theater near you. For an overview of the shorts and an interview with UK filmmaker Charlotte Regan (Standby) read our forecast article on the festival. 

Aside from the shorts programs it was also a very good year for filmmakers with a background in short filmmaking — especially female directors, who represented 58% of the main line-up at Sundance London. Actress and writer/director Augustine Frizzell made her feature length debut with Never Goin’ Back, produced by indie auteur David Lowery (Pioneer, A Ghost Story).

One of the most interesting entries was Crystal Moselle’s Skate Kitchen, which was developed into a feature based on a branded content short we featured back in 2016. Commissioned by the high-end fashion brand MIU MIU, the film That One Day built on the relationship the writer/director of the documentary The Wolfpack formed with the Skate Kitchen collective, a group of young female skaters with a strong online following and (from my experience at the festival) the charisma you’d expect from cool young women who radiate their passion.

That One Day by Crystal Moselle

The feature expands on the initial cast and story by raising the stakes with a few storylines and casting slightly more well known actors like Jaden Smith and Elizabeth Rodriguez (Orange is the New Black). There is a beautiful moment in That One Day that really got to me and serves as the emotional centerpiece of the short, which although it is incorporated into the feature looses some of its effectiveness there. But chances are, if you like That One Day you might want to hang out a bit more time with the cast of Skate Kitchen.

The featured image is Courtesy of Sundance Institute.