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A new installation by Ibrahim Mahama exposes the colonial ‘scars in the landscape’ in Northern Ghana and inspires the local community.
I am, sadly, not as up to speed on the art scene as I was as a younger man, and the name “Ibrahim Mahama” was foreign to me upon my initial watching of Dear Home of Scars. Suffice to say, I am now a big fan of the artist, who is currently the toast of the art world. In 2025, Mahama became the first African to top ArtReview’s Power 100 list, while also receiving “Artist of the Year” from Art Basel. These honors represent a rapid rise to the pinnacle of the field since his breakout exhibition at the 2015 Venice Biennale. This 20min short doc catches the now-almost 40-year-old artist just before these honors, as Mahama returned to his hometown of Tamale in Northern Ghana to work on a large-scale installation at the community center/art studio he has founded. If the goal of an artist profile doc is simply to introduce you to a neat person, a character you like, and work that you admire, then mission accomplished! Marina Meijer, a Dutch documentarian working for the interesting arts and science non-profit Ammodo, has produced a piece that thoughtfully introduces an exciting artist and gives space for an appreciation of his work. <img class="size-large wp-image-42496" src="https://www.shortoftheweek.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/dear-home-of-scars-short-film-03-640x470.jpg" alt="dear-home-of-scars-short-film" width="640" height="470" srcset="https://www.shortoftheweek.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/dear-home-of-scars-short-film-03-300x220.jpg 300w, https://www.shortoftheweek.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/dear-home-of-scars-short-film-03-768x564.jpg 768w, https://www.shortoftheweek.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/dear-home-of-scars-short-film-03-640x470.jpg 640w, https://www.shortoftheweek.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/dear-home-of-scars-short-film-03.jpg 1466w" sizes="(max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px" /> “By treating the train as both narrator and character, the film creates a poetic perspective on colonial history, memory, and identity.” – Director Marina Meijer Longtime readers know that I have slightly more expansive requirements for a profile doc, however. My framework for evaluation possesses three pillars: the hook, the subject’s performance on-camera, and the ‘filmmaking’. Mahama’s institutional validation satisfies the hook, and Meijer’s filmmaking is more than simply ‘good’. Of particular note, the use of Super 8 photography throughout the piece is very smart – more than a trendy mixing of formats, it meaningfully helps induce the audience into the historicity of the Mahama’s artistic frame. Still, in retrospect, my main attraction to Dear Home of Scars is, unsurprisingly, Mahama. Even though the imagery of abandoned railcars and colonial infrastructure of his installation is undeniably imposing, it is he who provides the film’s emotional power, via the unusual combination of authority and openness he projects on camera. I suppose it’s likely a requirement nowadays that a globally famous artist be charismatic and a skilled communicator, but this describes Mahama. He cuts a commanding figure – a celebrated artist, a builder of institutions, someone capable of mobilizing labor, ideas, and civic imagination on a massive scale. The film repeatedly frames him as an organizer and catalyst, not merely an individual creator, and he speaks with the cadence of someone constantly translating between scales – between history and personal memory, between abstract political ideas and tactile material reality. The film gains force because Mahama is such an adept guide through these ideas. He doesn’t merely explain the project to the audience; he inducts us into his way of seeing. <img class="size-large wp-image-42497" src="https://www.shortoftheweek.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/dear-home-of-scars-short-film-02-640x470.jpg" alt="dear-home-of-scars-short-film" width="640" height="470" srcset="https://www.shortoftheweek.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/dear-home-of-scars-short-film-02-300x220.jpg 300w, https://www.shortoftheweek.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/dear-home-of-scars-short-film-02-768x564.jpg 768w, https://www.shortoftheweek.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/dear-home-of-scars-short-film-02-640x470.jpg 640w, https://www.shortoftheweek.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/dear-home-of-scars-short-film-02.jpg 1466w" sizes="(max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px" /> “A sensory and poetic portrait of Ibrahim Mahama’s world at Red Clay, where history, labour, and transformation coexist in a continuous dialogue rather than a linear story” – Director Marina Meijer But if the film were only about his eloquence or leadership, it would risk becoming hagiography, and this is a credit to Meijer, for her instincts, and to Mahama for his acquiescence to this level of access. What elevates Dear Home of Scars is the vulnerability that leaks through the margins. There’s a subtle but persistent sense that Mahama feels the burden of becoming a symbolic figure for both the Ghanaian art scene and the communities surrounding these projects. The film observes him not just as an artist with vision, but as someone trying to live up to the moral implications of his own success, producing a film that fascinatingly recognizes that charisma can emerge from vulnerability as much as authority. Dear Home of Scars premiered in New York in 2024, linked to an exhibition of Mahama’s art by his gallery representative, White Cube, before visiting film festivals like the Athens International Film and Video Festival and winning a prize at the International Festival of Films on Art. It has been online via the Ammodo Docs YouTube channel, where it has performed well for a year and a half, before being brought to our attention. We are now pleased to recommend it to you as an official part of our online collection.
A young man returns home and spends the night trying to fulfill his father's dying wish for a proper burial.
The story of a son trying to honor the dying wishes of his late father, by following the Islamic burial rituals. In How To Bury Your Father, writer/director Ammar Keshodia explores a facet of the immigrant experience, through a narrative centered around loss and traditions. With a tender lens, Keshodia invites us into the intimacy of his protagonist as they deal with their grief and a deep sense of responsibility. “I’m haunted by the question of whether I’ll be able to do right by them when the time comes” When it comes to funeral traditions, cultural differences can make it especially complicated for immigrants to follow every rule. Any child wants to do right by their parents, but for first-generation immigrants, it can sometimes be difficult to feel connected to the process, let alone know how to navigate every step. Yet it is an important moment that, for obvious reasons, we all want to respect. Keshodia confessed, “Growing up in Canada for most of my life, I feel disconnected from my parents’ culture, and I’m haunted by the question of whether I’ll be able to do right by them when the time comes.” While the protagonist cannot find the white sheet required in Islamic burial traditions, he tries to stay as close as possible to that tradition with what he has available where he is. The way Keshodia captures his isolation in this moment is incredibly compelling and layered, touching on how children imitate their parents until, eventually, they no longer are imitating anymore. <img class="size-large wp-image-42469" src="https://www.shortoftheweek.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/HOW-TO-BURY-YOUR-FATHER-Short-Film-03-640x382.jpg" alt="HOW TO BURY YOUR FATHER Short Film" width="640" height="382" srcset="https://www.shortoftheweek.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/HOW-TO-BURY-YOUR-FATHER-Short-Film-03-300x179.jpg 300w, https://www.shortoftheweek.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/HOW-TO-BURY-YOUR-FATHER-Short-Film-03-768x459.jpg 768w, https://www.shortoftheweek.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/HOW-TO-BURY-YOUR-FATHER-Short-Film-03-640x382.jpg 640w" sizes="(max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px" /> Jai Mohit stars in How to Bury Your Father. Keshodia surprised us when he cites his love for horror films as one of the origins of the project. He explained that it was the genre’s use of imagery and metaphor to depict anxiety that inspired him, in addition to how Babk Anvari’s Under the Shadow and Joko Anwar’s Satan’s Slaves borrow imagery from Islam. He also subverts expectations by surprising the audience with the ambition of the final scene. The writing is undeniably impressive, taking us on such a poignant emotional journey with very little dialogue. Shot on 16mm by DP Julian Lomaga, the images perfectly enhance the depth of the screenplay, immersing us in an atmosphere that makes every emotion at play feel even more powerful. The score, composed by Arie Verheul van de Ven (No Crying at the Dinner Table), is also a very important element of the film. The fact that they keep on using the same melody throughout and play with the sound design to keep us on our toes makes the film all the more engaging. Keshodia is currently working on two new projects, Where Water Was, a short film going into production over the Summer of 2026, set in a near future where water has become so scarce that swimming is not a thing anymore – a “meditation on the things we lose as time marches on” – as well as a sci-fi feature (his first) in development currently titled Coming of Rage.
As a husband faces the consequences of his actions, he perhaps begins to realize that maybe size does in fact matter.
Based on the short story of the same name by Russian novelist Fyodor Sologub, Un Petit Homme (A Tiny Man) from filmmakers Aude David and Mikaël Gaudin thrusts viewers into the uneasy power dynamics of a marriage, as a husband takes increasingly drastic action to confront his feelings of inferiority. Rendered through striking charcoal animation, this 10-minute short avoids easy comedic clichés, instead unfolding as a darkly allegorical meditation on gender roles, masculinity, and control. A Tiny Man begins in a subdued and atmospheric fashion. Birds drift across the sky as the opening titles appear among their movements. The first glimpse we get of one of the film’s central figures – the wife – is of her feet and legs: sturdy and assured as they step toward the viewer. When her face is finally revealed, it is framed from below, the low angle emphasising her imposing physical presence. The introduction of her husband is equally precise and revealing. He first appears through shadow, his smaller silhouette trailing behind hers, head lowered. Nothing is spoken and there is no direct interaction between the pair, yet the film immediately establishes both the nature of their relationship and the themes underpinning the narrative. If ‘short man syndrome’ truly exists, then David and Gaudin perfectly translate it to the screen through their exquisite black-and-white animation. <img class="size-large wp-image-42492" src="https://www.shortoftheweek.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/a-tiny-man-short-film-02-640x427.jpeg" alt="a-tiny-man-short-film" width="640" height="427" srcset="https://www.shortoftheweek.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/a-tiny-man-short-film-02-300x200.jpeg 300w, https://www.shortoftheweek.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/a-tiny-man-short-film-02-768x512.jpeg 768w, https://www.shortoftheweek.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/a-tiny-man-short-film-02-640x427.jpeg 640w, https://www.shortoftheweek.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/a-tiny-man-short-film-02.jpeg 1200w" sizes="(max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px" /> The husband in A Tiny Man is preoccupied with how others see him and his relationship As the narrative unfolds, we watch the husband attempt to control the literal proportions of his wife, only for his efforts to unravel and the perceived distance between them to grow ever larger. While the film operates in an abstract and surreal world, it also manages to remain rooted to real-life, through recognisable emotional anxieties. Although Sologub’s original story is more than a century old, David and Gaudin adapt it in a manner that feels simultaneously classical – through its handcrafted visual style – and timeless through its absence of fixed historical detail. For a film so preoccupied with proportion and scale, A Tiny Man serves as a reminder of the remarkable impact a ten-minute short can achieve. Without David and Gaudin’s adaptation, I likely would never have encountered Sologub’s original tale, and that in itself speaks to one of the enduring strengths of short film: its ability to revive, reinterpret, and reintroduce stories across generations and mediums.
Deep in the dark woods on the shore of a lake, a determined little girl confronts Death itself when the strange creature arrives to take her sick grandfather from their humble cabin home.
There is a distinct kind of magic that occurs when an animator decides to translate the heaviest, most complicated corners of the human mind into frame-by-frame reality. For director Yohann Abdelnour, Crow Man is a project that was born nearly 10-years ago – a deliberate, painstaking letter written 24 frames per second in Photoshop to his younger self. It is a cinematic vessel designed to hold the dual monsters of grief and anger that inevitably swallow us when we lose someone precious. In Abdelnour’s own words, animation provided “the power to do stuff I cannot do in real life,” and the result is a devastatingly beautiful, visceral depiction of our desperate, frenzied struggle against the inevitable. Visually, Crow Man moves with a raw, urgent energy, but it is the film’s detailed and unnerving sound design that completely submerges the viewer. Every audio decision carries weight: the sharp crunch of footsteps on the floor, the frantic splashes of lake water, the violent thumps of a struggle, and the girl’s cries of sheer desperation. Abdelnour plays brilliantly with contrast, filling our ears with the chaos of a fight before dropping us into sudden, absolute silence – the deafening truth of emptiness. And then, of course, there are the crows. Like Death itself, they are presented as strange, incomprehensible creatures, mislabeled as evil simply because we fear what they represent. <img class="size-large wp-image-42484" src="https://www.shortoftheweek.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/crow-man-Yohann-Abdelnour-02-640x360.jpeg" alt="crow man Yohann Abdelnour" width="640" height="360" srcset="https://www.shortoftheweek.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/crow-man-Yohann-Abdelnour-02-300x169.jpeg 300w, https://www.shortoftheweek.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/crow-man-Yohann-Abdelnour-02-768x432.jpeg 768w, https://www.shortoftheweek.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/crow-man-Yohann-Abdelnour-02-640x360.jpeg 640w, https://www.shortoftheweek.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/crow-man-Yohann-Abdelnour-02.jpeg 1360w" sizes="(max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px" /> The young girl’s grandfather helps her come to terms with what comes next. The loss of a loved one feels deeply unfair, whether it arrives as a sudden shock or at the end of a long illness. It has the power to freeze a person in time, anchoring them to a single moment for years, following them wherever they go until it is their turn to cross over too. Watching this short brought back vivid memories of my own sleepless nights, staring blankly at a lamp on the ceiling and wondering: How does it feel when you’re dead? Where is the person I lost now? The film’s young protagonist cannot bear the uncertainty of those questions, so she acts. Heavily armed with guns and determination, she fights Death with everything she has. In less than ten minutes, Abdelnour utilizes fierce camerawork, fluid animation, and gruesome detail to illustrate an agonizing truth: you cannot outrun, outsmart, or outfight the end. <img class="size-large wp-image-42485" src="https://www.shortoftheweek.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/crow-man-Yohann-Abdelnour-06-640x360.jpeg" alt="crow man Yohann Abdelnour" width="640" height="360" srcset="https://www.shortoftheweek.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/crow-man-Yohann-Abdelnour-06-300x169.jpeg 300w, https://www.shortoftheweek.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/crow-man-Yohann-Abdelnour-06-768x432.jpeg 768w, https://www.shortoftheweek.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/crow-man-Yohann-Abdelnour-06-640x360.jpeg 640w" sizes="(max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px" /> Despite it violent moments the lasting impact of Crow Man is one of love. Yet what elevates Crow Man from tragedy into a masterpiece of spiritual empathy is its final pivot. We are conditioned to view Death as cruel, but Abdelnour reveals it to be something entirely different: compassionate. The final soft embrace from her grandfather, alongside the gentle, knowing eyes of this terrifying “monster,” reminds us that Death is not an ending, but simply another step on the staircase. Is it the last one? Like many of life’s grandest lessons, we can only truly know by experiencing it ourselves. Despite its outward violence, Crow Man is ultimately a profound film about love, and the terrifying, beautiful lengths we are willing to go to for the ones who hold our hearts.
Short of the Week Named BIFA-Qualifying Online Channel
Short of the Week announced as one of just nine qualifying online channel for the BIFA Best British Short Film award
Following recent changes to the eligibility rules for the British Independent Film Awards, Short of the Week has been officially recognised as one of just nine online platforms qualifying filmmakers for the BIFA Best British Short Film award. The announcement marks a significant moment for S/W, with few major awards bodies currently recognising online platforms as an official pathway to awards consideration. This inclusion signals a growing acknowledgement of the role curated digital platforms, like S/W, play in championing emerging filmmaking talent alongside the traditional festival circuit. “We’re genuinely thrilled to be included on BIFA’s qualifying list,” said Rob Munday, Managing Editor of Short of the Week. “We hope this recognition is the first of many that mark a broader industry shift, with other major awards bodies – including BAFTA and the Academy Awards – embracing online platforms, alongside festivals, as credible sources for short film and talent discovery.” The new qualification status will not apply to every film featured on Short of the Week. However, British-produced short films completed after 1 May 2025 and selected for the platform will be eligible to apply for the 2026 Best British Short Film award when submissions open in June. Full rules and eligibility criteria can be found here Over the past two decades, a number of filmmakers featured on Short of the Week have gone on to receive BIFA recognition, including Chris Shepherd, Simon Ellis, Nina Gantz, Charlie Shackleton and more. With our platform now serving as an official qualifying route, the next BIFA-winning short may already have premiered on our site.
Casey’s attempted surprise dinner date gets derailed when Taylor, her girlfriend, reveals she has brought home a strange, wounded creature she intends to nurse back to health.
Relationships are difficult. While some appear to function effortlessly, most require sustained compromise and patience to survive. In Steak Dinner, writer-director Nathan Mark Ginter explores these tensions through the arrival of a strange creature in the life of a couple, using genre as a lens through which to examine how avoiding conflict can quietly damage relationships. Described by Ginter as “an anti-rom-com-creature-feature,” the film blends tones and genres in a way that feels both conceptually inventive and emotionally recognisable, managing that rare feat of being formally distinctive and thematically grounded. Although its premise could easily have drifted into something alienating or overly surreal, the film instead maintains a surprising emotional realism beneath its absurd surface. The short was created as part of the Anora x Kodak short film contest, which invited filmmakers to create love stories shot on film within a tight production window of roughly thirty days. For Ginter, the project “provided the chance to write, shoot, edit, and showcase a project quickly, without second-guessing any instincts.” While the circumstances surrounding a film’s production should not necessarily shape one’s response to the final work, with the knowledge of this quick turnaround the confidence and originality on display here certainly speak strongly to Ginter’s instincts as a filmmaker. <img class="size-large wp-image-42460" src="https://www.shortoftheweek.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/Steak-Dinner-Short-Film-03-640x360.jpeg" alt=""The creature at the film’s center, an otherworldly mollusk named Henrietta, was a fully cable-driven puppet, operated through holes cut in the tables on set" - Ginter on his film's " width="640" height="360" srcset="https://www.shortoftheweek.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/Steak-Dinner-Short-Film-03-300x169.jpeg 300w, https://www.shortoftheweek.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/Steak-Dinner-Short-Film-03-768x432.jpeg 768w, https://www.shortoftheweek.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/Steak-Dinner-Short-Film-03-640x360.jpeg 640w" sizes="(max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px" /> “A fully cable-driven puppet, operated through holes cut in the tables on set” – Ginter explaining how they brought Henrietta, the short’s creature, to life. “From blank page to finished film, Steak Dinner was completed in six weeks and shot on 16mm with all in-camera effects,” Ginter explains. While there is much to admire in the production overall, the undeniable centrepiece is the strange creature that unexpectedly enters the couple’s relationship. Described by the filmmaker as an “otherworldly mollusk,” Henrietta was realised through practical effects as a cable-driven puppet. Designed and created by self-described “monster maker” and visual artist Nicholas Winstead, the creature is both unsettling and oddly sympathetic, embodying the film’s balance of discomfort and tenderness. Following an impressive festival run – which included screenings at Beyond Fest, Fantasia, Fantastic Fest, and Sitges Film Festival – Ginter has already moved onto a new short, Overgrown, which is currently touring the festival circuit, while also developing several feature projects. Steak Dinner is such an inventive and immersive piece that it leaves genuine anticipation for whatever emerges next from Ginter’s filmmaking career. We can’t wait!
Tony and Lindsay are looking for a permanent solution to their family's fertility, but for Tony, the simple procedure poses a threat to his fragile masculinity.
While there are many myths surrounding the male vasectomy procedure, perhaps the most enduring is the idea that undergoing the operation somehow diminishes a man’s virility – and, by extension, his masculinity. It is precisely this notion that writer/director Ben S. Hyland (Quiet Carriage) pushes to absurd extremes in his hilarious short film, The Snip. “The concept of masculinity was very much tied to the act of procreation” Hyland establishes the film’s tone immediately, introducing its protagonist, Tony, sitting in a pub utterly transfixed by the testicles of a dog brought in by its owner. It is an unusual opening, but one that quickly reveals itself to be entirely fitting as the narrative unfolds and we come to understand the anxieties and decisions that have brought Tony and his partner to this stage in their lives. “As a man with children who no longer wanted further offspring, the decision to get a vasectomy had become part of the conversation in my marriage,” Hyland candidly explains when discussing the origins of the film. Through conversations with friends in similar situations, he discovered many shared the same vague yet persistent anxieties surrounding sex and the procedure itself. As he puts it: “The concept of masculinity was very much tied to the act of procreation. So I wanted to explore that both within myself and within the film.” <img class="size-large wp-image-42450" src="https://www.shortoftheweek.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/the-snip-ben-s-hyland-06-640x268.jpg" alt="the-snip-ben-s-hyland" width="640" height="268" srcset="https://www.shortoftheweek.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/the-snip-ben-s-hyland-06-768x321.jpg 768w, https://www.shortoftheweek.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/the-snip-ben-s-hyland-06-640x268.jpg 640w" sizes="(max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px" /> An animated character called ‘Snippy Steve’ was one of Hyland’s favourite parts of the production. While The Snip will feel particularly relatable to men of a certain age – myself included – it remains an accessible comedy with broader appeal through its exploration of relationships, family, and masculinity. For Hyland, however, the project also served another purpose: an opportunity to further his career through the festival circuit, where the film picked up multiple awards, while also functioning as a calling card for a potential transition into feature filmmaking. That said, Hyland did not immediately move into features after completing The Snip. Instead, his next directorial effort was another short, The Man That I Wave At, a darker but similarly relatable comedy that has already enjoyed success on the festival circuit. Nevertheless, a move into feature filmmaking now appears increasingly likely, with a feature adaptation of that short – as well as another project, Clickbait – currently in development.
21st Century Short Film Palme d'Or Winners
In honor of the start of Cannes, we collect all the winners of the fest’s top short film prize from this century, and muse about Cannes’ place in the larger Short Film landscape.
Cannes is a hallowed name in cinema—you don’t need me to rhapsodize about that. Winning the Palme d’Or is a legacy-clinching achievement for a director, either as a capstone to a legendary career (Kurosawa, 1980) or the coronation of an exciting new one (Östlund, 2017). It is a commercial boon as well, essentially ensuring global distribution for its winner and propelling numerous box-office successes. You know this, yet often forgotten is that there are multiple Palmes given out every festival… With Cannes starting this week, short filmmakers from around the world will descend on the seaside town to experience the glamor of the event and to partake in the influential Short Film Corner / Rendez-vous Industry programming. Thousands of shorts are at SFC, and dozens of shorts are programmed in sidebars and satellites. But the jewel of the Cannes short film scene is the ultra-exclusive Official Selection, where the top jury prize winner receives the Short Film Palme d’Or. We’ve collected all the winners of this prestigious prize this century into a Shortverse playlist that you can browse, with 14 of the 25 winners available to stream for free. <img class="size-large wp-image-42480" src="https://www.shortoftheweek.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/Short-Film-Palme-Dor-Winners.png" alt="Short-Film-Palme-Dor-Winners" width="720" srcset="https://www.shortoftheweek.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/Short-Film-Palme-Dor-Winners-300x272.png 300w, https://www.shortoftheweek.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/Short-Film-Palme-Dor-Winners-768x697.png 768w, https://www.shortoftheweek.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/Short-Film-Palme-Dor-Winners-640x581.png 640w, https://www.shortoftheweek.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/Short-Film-Palme-Dor-Winners.png 899w" sizes="(max-width: 899px) 100vw, 899px" /> Click on the image to view the Collection on Shortverse Putting this collection together made us consider the larger context of the award. If Cannes is the pinnacle of film fests on the feature side, does the same hold for shorts? It would be disingenuous to suggest that the Short Film Palme is of equal career or cultural weight to its feature sibling for a multitude of reasons—the lesser position of short films in the cultural firmament first and foremost, but also for reasons more germane to the event itself, its programming history, and the nature of the short film landscape. I’ve been a guest at film festivals on most every continent (still awaiting an invitation Antarctica!), but I have yet to visit Cannes. I also associate with, but would not consider myself part of, the professional short film community of festival heads, sales agents, and buyers that organizes around large, mostly European fests like Cannes, so maybe this invalidates my perspective. Still, from afar, I probably romanticize the Cannes short program beyond its actual place within the short film ecosystem. On the one hand, the Short Palme is maybe the most exclusive prize in all of short film—only ten entries make it into the official selection each year, from a healthy 3000+ entries (strict premiere requirements do shrink this number), and the reputation of the larger event means the festival usually has first dibs on its picks. While individual films are sometimes not to my taste, the program is always strong, and its selections invariably go on long and impressive festival runs. However, this selectivity is undermined in the popular imagination by confusion over the numerous satellites orbiting the fest and most notably the non-curated Short Film Corner market, where the perennial confusion caused by filmmakers advertising that they “got into Cannes” when referring to the SFC has become a meme over the years. Perception aside, the enduring influence of its programming is also up for debate. The films are of quality, but that is an irrelevant criterion at this level. Do they shape trends or culture? Do they herald exciting or important voices in global cinema? Do they leave a lasting legacy? While I hate to utilize the Oscars as a barometer for anything, it’s notable to me that the feature Palme winner is nominated for Best Picture most every year, while only two Short Film Palme winners have been nominated this century. On a more basic level, I don’t see a lot of directors who went on to become “household names” among this collection of Palme-winning directors . Compared to Sundance’s role as a launchpad for recognizable directing careers and its centrality to the American indie-to-feature pipeline via the Sundance Institute, Cannes’ short competition often feels more like a snapshot of contemporary international art cinema than a farm system for future celebrity directors. <img class="size-large wp-image-40402" src="https://www.shortoftheweek.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/27-Flora-Anna-Buda-08-640x427.jpg" alt="27-Flora-Anna-Buda-short-film" width="640" height="427" srcset="https://www.shortoftheweek.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/27-Flora-Anna-Buda-08-300x200.jpg 300w, https://www.shortoftheweek.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/27-Flora-Anna-Buda-08-768x512.jpg 768w, https://www.shortoftheweek.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/27-Flora-Anna-Buda-08-640x427.jpg 640w" sizes="(max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px" /> 27 by Flóra Anna Buda won the Short Film Palme d’Or in 2023 I hypothesize that the exclusivity of Cannes works against itself in some ways. First, by maintaining such a small program, they deny themselves “at-bats” in the quest to discover future important filmmakers. It’s simple odds—Berlin typically has three times the number of shorts, Sundance has 6x. More controversially, I also think that being selected to Cannes hurts the ultimate cultural legacies of these films. Because of the exclusivity and because the brand of Cannes is so prestigious, almost every official selection ends up selling very well, so they get tied up in numerous rights and broadcast deals that prevent them from going online. More than most celebrated festival shorts, I’d argue that films that play Cannes are strangely underseen—they succeed wildly on the circuit, but compared to selections from other major festivals, they don’t as often receive the sort of broad post-festival discovery and appraisal of a typical Short of the Week selection or Vimeo Staff Pick. Am I biased on this point? Undoubtedly. But we all live online now, and this is the fundamental battleground of culture and attention. In that sense, the question isn’t simply whether Cannes selects great films—it obviously does—but whether prestige and scarcity still translate in our contemporary environment of cultural circulation. I think of my experience with Chienne d’histoire. The Palme-winner in 2010, Short of the Week was three years old at the time, and I was still unconnected to the entrenched short film world. Nevertheless, I became fascinated with the short and would trawl the web searching for it at least once a month. That’s just what it was like back then—I kept a list of shorts I would track, and the dopamine rush when sometimes the film would miraculously appear was unreal! But Avédikian’s short never did appear. I think I dutifully continued looking for it for 6 years before giving up. Now it is available on Arte, and I could watch it using a VPN if I wanted to, but, strangely, the impetus is gone. I still have yet to. Fundamentally, I think Flóra Anna Buda and Miyu putting 27 online 18 months after winning the Palme was bold—I believe it will prove to be a boon for the short’s lasting influence, and a benefit to Flóra’s future career too. These are somewhat awkward musings for a playlist celebrating 25 years of Palme d’Or prizewinners, but part of our mission is to not simply hype famous names but to describe for you the lay of this byzantine land as best we see it. Cannes is at once the crown jewel of the festival world, but shorts do not really have a mountaintop. Great short films, and by consequence, great emerging filmmakers, can and do emerge from anywhere, and this is one of the things we love the most about the form. The shorts at Cannes are excellent, and being programmed there is a great honor that can majorly benefit a filmmaker’s career. Yet for shorts, Cannes is less the definitive summit than one powerful node within a much wider and more diffuse ecosystem, a fact that, due to the event’s glamor, even I sometimes forget. This list of the 21st-century winners is a fascinating record of what is valued by the fest and its juries, and what has (or has failed) to pass the test of time with audiences.
When a powerful wind disrupts life in a park, several strangers are swept into intersecting paths that carry them toward unexpected new horizons.
There will be a few moments in life when everything is turned upside down – the end of a meaningful relationship, a change of career, or the loss of a loved one. In those instances, it can feel as though a force both brutal and unstoppable – like it’s nature itself – is shifting your destiny forever. Like the wind on a particular day, it arrives without warning – a single current that pushes one door closed and nudges another open – and suddenly the coordinates of everything you thought you knew have shifted. That’s exactly the wind of Jour de Vent (Windy Day), and it’s been following me ever since I watched it. Distributed by Miyu and clocking in at a dense yet delicate seven minutes, this short unfolds as a collective daydream shaped by six directors – Martin Chailloux, Ai Kim Crespin, Elise Golfouse, Chloé Lab, Hugo Taillez, and Camille Truding – who set out to make something both impossibly intimate and generously universal. They wanted a film that could hold a fragment of each of their own lives, resulting in a story that breathes family, love, death, and work – the whole trembling inventory of a human existence. Animated in a hybrid 2D-3D style, Windy Day feels less like a traditional animation and more like a graphic novel caught in a gentle gale. <img class="size-large wp-image-42368" src="https://www.shortoftheweek.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/jour-de-vent-windy-day-short-film-05-640x268.jpg" alt="jour-de-vent-windy-day-short-film" width="640" height="268" srcset="https://www.shortoftheweek.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/jour-de-vent-windy-day-short-film-05-300x126.jpg 300w, https://www.shortoftheweek.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/jour-de-vent-windy-day-short-film-05-768x322.jpg 768w, https://www.shortoftheweek.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/jour-de-vent-windy-day-short-film-05-640x268.jpg 640w" sizes="(max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px" /> Jour de vent was created at the French Animation School École des Nouvelles Images as part of the graduating class of 2024 The result is a slice of life that barely has time to land before it lifts again. An ordinary street, an ordinary day – and then that exact kind of wind we were talking about. Enough to unsettle a scarf, scatter a handful of papers, send a single object tumbling after a stranger, and with it, a cascade of unstoppable questions. What’s important to you? What would you lose, and what might you gain, if the wind simply decided for you? Windy Day doesn’t so much answer these questions as leave them suspended in the air, as tangible as the dust motes in a shaft of afternoon light. It is reminder that time is our most quietly spent currency – we rarely feel its weight until a gust pulls it from our hands. Visually, the film is an exquisite ache. The linework holds the kind of imperfection that feels deliberate and tender, while the palette shifts with the emotional weather of each scene – muted ochres and cooled blues, the hue of a memory you didn’t know you’d kept. The directors’ complementary skills are stitched into every frame; you can sense the way each of them found their place in the telling, the way personal grief, joy, and longing are poured into the thin space between one drawing and the next. <img class="size-large wp-image-42372" src="https://www.shortoftheweek.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/jour-de-vent-windy-day-short-film-01-640x268.jpg" alt="jour-de-vent-windy-day-short-film" width="640" height="268" srcset="https://www.shortoftheweek.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/jour-de-vent-windy-day-short-film-01-300x126.jpg 300w, https://www.shortoftheweek.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/jour-de-vent-windy-day-short-film-01-768x322.jpg 768w, https://www.shortoftheweek.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/jour-de-vent-windy-day-short-film-01-640x268.jpg 640w" sizes="(max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px" /> Jour de vent played festivals worldwide, including the 2025 edition of SIGGRAPH. I recognized that tension immediately. I’ve known that sudden gust – the instant when a single event, a letter, a diagnosis, a voice on the phone, scatters your certainties across the ground. I remember standing in the wreckage of my own plans and having to quietly ask what I was actually living for. Windy Day takes that solitary reckoning and makes it communal. It holds your gaze and says: this is what it means to be alive at the mercy of forces you never chose – terrifying, and yet it’s the only story we have. The wind doesn’t care about your plans. It simply moves, then passes, and life – rearranged, freighted with new absences or unexpected gifts – goes on. The film knows this. It doesn’t beg for your attention and just unfolds, like a page turning in the breeze, a page that waits for you to see yourself inside it. So stand still for a moment. Let the gust find you. Let it ask you the only question that ever mattered. And then keep walking, because that’s what the living do.
Sisters Dinky and Flossy are truly at rock bottom, but when they discover their estranged deadbeat dad flaunting wealth on some sugar baby site, they pay him a visit to uncover the truth...and maybe some cash.
Imagine you’re in a financially tough situation, and you scroll through the apps to find your estranged father – whom you’ve always known as a deadbeat – actively seeking a sugarbaby. This is what happens to Dinky, who convinces her sister Flossy they should pay him a visit and figure out what’s going on. With Finding Daddy, writer/director Emily Wilson crafts a delightfully funny sibling story, where the protagonists’ mission perfectly blends absurdity with emotional depth. “I wanted Finding Daddy to feel lived in, where no detail is too small” The exposition of Finding Daddy is so sharply written, with a raw, unapologetic honesty, that it almost feels like a stream of consciousness. So it’s not surprising to learn that “a depressing, dark internal monologue” Wilson had one day by a pool inspired those opening lines – a starting point from which she built the rest of the narrative. The director pays specific attention to the universe in which the film unfolds: a “familiar world where I could air out very real frustrations while still having fun with the language, gnarly world-building, and cinematic style,” she explained. Visually, the world she brings to the screen with DP Kelsey Talton is incredibly detailed. From the color palette and framing to the production design by T Marsh (who also worked as production designer on Neal Mulani’s short Rat!), everything feels palpable and enhances the overall tone of the film. “I wanted Finding Daddy to feel lived in,” Wilson reveals and there is something very organic about the way they paint the mess and chaos in the film, which complements both the comedy and its deeper layers. <img class="size-large wp-image-42443" src="https://www.shortoftheweek.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/Finding-Daddy-Emily-Wilson-02-640x360.jpeg" alt="Finding Daddy Emily Wilson" width="640" height="360" srcset="https://www.shortoftheweek.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/Finding-Daddy-Emily-Wilson-02-300x169.jpeg 300w, https://www.shortoftheweek.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/Finding-Daddy-Emily-Wilson-02-768x432.jpeg 768w, https://www.shortoftheweek.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/Finding-Daddy-Emily-Wilson-02-640x360.jpeg 640w" sizes="(max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px" /> Cricket Arrison (L) & Lauren Servideo stars as sisters, Dinky & Flossy, in Finding Daddy When describing the tone, the director admits she “wanted to make a film that struck a balance between bleak realism and heightened triumph.” To get there, she strikes a balance that allows the film to succeed on both fronts. Constantly juggling its sad and absurd undertones, the story is cleverly constructed, with the pacing refined in the edit to ensure the broader commentary on adulting and the state of the world never turns into farce. To some extent, the film is also empowering, as we want these two sisters to succeed and get their lives together. Both Cricket Arrison and Lauren Servideo are perfect as the two sisters. The life they inject in their characters makes the story all the more compelling, giving subtle backstory and hitting all the nuances of the screenplay. Ahead of its online debut, Finding Daddy toured the festival circuit. Wilson is currently developing a feature dark comedy with “an erotic thriller underbelly”, as well as the feature version of Finding Daddy.
Under the pressures of fame and parasocial demands, pop star Poppy relinquishes control to Aura, an AI clone trained on her past content. As Aura begins dictating her every word and action, Poppy battles to reclaim her autonomy.
In a piece I wrote last year, I noted that AI filmmaking has developed a slightly obnoxious tendency toward navel-gazing—an impulse to engage philosophically with the means of its own creation. Paul Trillo’s The Most Perfect Perfect Person, created in collaboration with the American music star Poppy, leans directly into that instinct—it’s a film that is very much about AI, made with AI, and conscious of both. What distinguishes it is not that it avoids the trap, but that it transcends it, finding rare alignment between subject, method, and meaning that makes the self-reflexivity feel earned. Set in a near-present that feels only mildly exaggerated, the film follows Poppy as she relinquishes her public-facing self to an AI duplicate trained on her entire creative output. The clone feeds her responses in real time—during interviews with the press, interactions with her fans, and even on phone calls with friends—until the distinction between author and artifact collapses. It’s a familiar enough premise on paper, but Trillo locates it in the particularly fertile arena of pop music, where identity has always been both product and battleground, and the excitement of creative innovation is balanced by the specter of commodification. <img class="size-large wp-image-42277" src="https://www.shortoftheweek.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/Poppy2-640x214.jpg" alt="lkdjljds" width="640" height="214" srcset="https://www.shortoftheweek.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/Poppy2-300x100.jpg 300w, https://www.shortoftheweek.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/Poppy2-768x257.jpg 768w, https://www.shortoftheweek.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/Poppy2-640x214.jpg 640w" sizes="(max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px" /> Poppy, with her management team, being pitched her chatbot duplicate The stakes are articulated most clearly in Trillo’s own framing of the project. “AI threatens to take away more than just jobs; it threatens to take away an artist’s voice. We risk a real homogeneity of culture. Bots making content for bots. Originality is at stake.” It’s a strikingly critical stance from a filmmaker who has, in recent years, become one of AI filmmaking’s most visible proponents. For a sizable portion of the audience—particularly those wary of AI’s encroachment into creative fields—these quotes may seem rich. But, Trillo is, arguably, sui generis among AI influencers in his traditional production chops and the strength of his filmography: five Short of the Week selections since 2010, over a dozen Vimeo Staff Picks, and a deserved reputation as one of the great technical innovators of his generation. His use of AI tends to be deeply conceptual and hybrid in execution, emphasizing its incorporation into professional workflows—something he’s actively helping to build via his role at the AI studio, Asteria. In this short, AI is neither gimmick nor replacement—it’s a tool, deployed with intention, in service of a cohesive vision. Trillo’s stated fears land not as rejection, but as something closer to self-interrogation. <img class="size-large wp-image-42280" src="https://www.shortoftheweek.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/poppy4-640x214.jpg" alt="asa" width="640" height="214" srcset="https://www.shortoftheweek.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/poppy4-300x100.jpg 300w, https://www.shortoftheweek.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/poppy4-768x256.jpg 768w, https://www.shortoftheweek.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/poppy4-640x214.jpg 640w" sizes="(max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px" /> Trillo visualizes an LLM’s inner workings—Poppys spawning and collapsing in succession. The deployment of AI not only as a subject, but as a method, helps provide the film with an interesting charge. Trillo’s AI usage oscillates between the overt—glitchy morphs, proliferating selves—and the invisible, where the tech functions more like traditional VFX. The result is a formal instability that mirrors the film’s thematic concerns: you’re never quite sure what you’re looking at, or how it was made, and that uncertainty becomes the point. The team leans into this ambiguity in its marketing, calling the film “based on true events,” with Poppy playing a version of herself and her AI counterpart’s dialogue generated by a Poppy chatbot that the artist trained for a previous performance art piece. There’s something conceptually intriguing in this—an ontological slipperiness that gestures toward something unsettlingly real. And yet, the film stops short of fully inhabiting that liminality. Its corporate antagonists are too arch, its visual design too stylized, Poppy’s performance too detached, to sustain the illusion. Rather than playing with Documentary styles, The Most Perfect Perfect Person lands closer to a sleek episode of Black Mirror, which, to be clear, is not a knock. <img class="size-large wp-image-42279" src="https://www.shortoftheweek.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/poppy3-640x214.jpg" alt="as" width="640" height="214" srcset="https://www.shortoftheweek.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/poppy3-300x100.jpg 300w, https://www.shortoftheweek.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/poppy3-768x257.jpg 768w, https://www.shortoftheweek.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/poppy3-640x214.jpg 640w" sizes="(max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px" /> Poppys tested and discarded in the span of a thought Perhaps though, that slickness and clarity of tone allow the film’s ideas to resonate more cleanly. Trillo is less interested in convincing us that this is happening than in showing how easily it could. Notably, the project began production in 2024, before premiering at LA’s celebrated Flux Screening Series, yet its central conceit—AI replicas of artists, trained on their likeness and deployed at scale—has already begun to materialize. What might have read as speculative even a year ago now feels like a near-term inevitability. Which ultimately circles back to the film’s central anxiety. The danger isn’t that AI will replace artists outright, but that it will erode the friction that makes their voices distinct. In outsourcing expression—whether to algorithms, platforms, or audience expectation—we risk arriving at a culture of perfect fluency and zero authorship. Bots making content for bots, as Trillo puts it. The Most Perfect Perfect Person doesn’t resolve that tension, but it renders it with uncommon precision—and in doing so, makes the loss of voice feel not speculative, but already underway.
During a cold Midwestern winter, Julie, a factory driver with a mysterious illness, attempts to unravel the truth behind the loneliness and the decay that plague her and her industrial town’s waterways.
Filmmakers have adopted a wide range of approaches – from cute animation to hard-hitting documentary – to engage with environmental concerns in their work. For Hannah Schierbeek, however, the intention behind her short film, A Black Hole Near Kent County, was to create what she describes as an “environmental mystery.” Drawing on her own experiences of pollution in Midwestern America, Schierbeek’s film functions both as a deeply personal tribute to her grandmother, who died from a rare form of blood cancer and as a haunting exploration of the effects of industrialisation. A Black Hole Near Kent Country begins in striking fashion – a landscape literally ablaze – before transitioning into a more contemplative rhythm as we follow its protagonist, Julie, navigating her hometown in search of answers to an unexplained illness. As both writer and director, Schierbeek asks for a degree of patience from her audience, revealing the narrative details gradually, until they build to an emotionally-charged and unforgettable conclusion. <img class="size-large wp-image-42396" src="https://www.shortoftheweek.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/Black-Hole_Still4-640x384.jpg" alt="A Black Hole Near Kent County Short Film" width="640" height="384" srcset="https://www.shortoftheweek.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/Black-Hole_Still4-300x180.jpg 300w, https://www.shortoftheweek.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/Black-Hole_Still4-768x461.jpg 768w, https://www.shortoftheweek.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/Black-Hole_Still4-640x384.jpg 640w" sizes="(max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px" /> Mariea Luisa Macavei stars as a journalist in A Black Hole Near Kent County It is within the film’s editing and carefully calibrated pacing that its impact most fully emerges. The deliberate unfolding of the narrative not only allows viewers to become immersed in the stark, wintry landscapes and Julie’s interior world, but also creates space for reflection. While the setting and situation here are highly specific, the film’s central themes – pollution, isolation, and justice – resonate more broadly. With Schierbeek ensuring that her viewers are given both the time and the space to consider their own relationship to these concerns. The impact of A Black Hole Near Kent County is further heightened by the observational quality of its cinematography, which lends the film a grounded, almost tactile authenticity. Schierbeek notes that the decision to shoot on 16mm – her first time working with the format – was motivated by a desire to “capture the texture and depth of colour” characteristic of Midwestern winters. At the same time, the choice imposed a certain discipline to the production, helping to keep it within budget. <img class="size-large wp-image-42394" src="https://www.shortoftheweek.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/Black-Hole_Still6-640x384.jpg" alt="A Black Hole Near Kent County Short Film" width="640" height="384" srcset="https://www.shortoftheweek.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/Black-Hole_Still6-300x180.jpg 300w, https://www.shortoftheweek.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/Black-Hole_Still6-768x461.jpg 768w, https://www.shortoftheweek.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/Black-Hole_Still6-640x384.jpg 640w" sizes="(max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px" /> Schierbeek reveals they used the framing “in a way that made our world feel isolating and even a bit frightening at times.” “Most of our scenes were limited to one to three shots, and we shot very few takes in order to bring costs down,” Schierbeek explains. She adds that the film was shot using predominantly natural light, with camera movement deliberately restricted through the consistent use of a tripod. This approach not only reinforces the film’s observational tone, but also frames the environment in a way that renders it isolating and, at times, subtly unsettling. Following a festival run that included screenings at Clermont-Ferrand International Short Film Festival and Ouray International Film Festival, we are pleased to host the online premiere of A Black Hole Near Kent County on Short of the Week. Since completing the film, Schierbeek has continued to build momentum: her follow-up directorial work, Radiant Frost, is currently on the festival circuit, having already screened at Sundance Film Festival in 2026. Her work as a producer has also drawn attention, with Don Josephus Raphael Eblahan’s Vox Humana (a favourite of mine) appearing at both Clermont-Ferrand and Sundance in 2025.
A discomforting portrait of Gavin Lyle, a middle-England family man and aspiring right-wing parliamentary candidate played by actor Jack Lowden
Financial insecurity, nationalist sentiment, and concerns surrounding immigration are among the factors most frequently cited in explanations for shifting political allegiances toward far-right parties. Across much of the world, the rise of right-wing populism has become increasingly difficult to ignore – a development that continues to generate widespread unease and cause rifts in families. In the United Kingdom, with local elections approaching, Oscar-winning filmmaker and multiple S/W alum Aneil Karia once again turns his attention to this political climate through the release of a new short film, Vote Gavin Lyle. At first glance, the film’s presentation – it’s title and thumbnail especially – so closely resembles that of a contemporary campaign video that it could easily be mistaken for a genuine piece of campaign material – the film even has a guerrilla marketing campaign on the streets of London which which promotes Gavin Lyle as an actual candidate. This ambiguity appears central to Karia’s approach. Framed in a mockumentary style, the film introduces its titular figure – portrayed by Jack Lowden – as he articulates concerns about national change, particularly in relation to immigration, while washing a Land Rover outside a large country home. The effect is a carefully calibrated blurring of fiction and reality, one which will hopefully provoke its viewers to interrogate the visual codes of contemporary political messaging. <img class="size-large wp-image-42420" src="https://www.shortoftheweek.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/Vote-Gavin-Lyle-Aneil-Karia-07-640x360.jpeg" alt="Vote-Gavin-Lyle-Aneil-Karia" width="640" height="360" srcset="https://www.shortoftheweek.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/Vote-Gavin-Lyle-Aneil-Karia-07-300x169.jpeg 300w, https://www.shortoftheweek.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/Vote-Gavin-Lyle-Aneil-Karia-07-768x432.jpeg 768w, https://www.shortoftheweek.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/Vote-Gavin-Lyle-Aneil-Karia-07-640x360.jpeg 640w" sizes="(max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px" /> Jack Lowden as titular aspiring politician Gavin Lyle. Although Vote Gavin Lyle introduces a more overtly comedic register than some of Karia’s earlier work, for those familiar with director’s previous shorts, this isn’t a total departure from his previous shorts. Shot by Stuart Bentley, who also collaborated with Karia on his debut feature, Surge, and the Academy Award-winning The Long Goodbye, the film carries a visual precision that feels distinct to the director. While Vote Gavin Lyle may not deliver the same visceral impact as some of his previous films, like that Oscar-winner it engages directly with pressing political questions. Starting with those comedic tones, Karia’s film takes a shift in its conclusion with a surreal dance sequence set to Day-O (The Banana Boat Song), a traditional Jamaican folk song, which helps to further amplify the film’s engagement with questions of identity, culture, and national narrative. In contrast to more direct forms of political critique, Karia’s approach resists targeting specific parties or public figures. Instead, the film examines the broader emotional and psychological elements that underpin contemporary political messaging. With the filmmaker noting that “voters feel so disenfranchised and patronised by the political establishment”, he points to this as one of the reasons for the rise of more extreme right-wing politics. However, Karia didn’t think it would be useful to point his focus on particular individuals or parties and expose how “nasty and awful” they are, so instead he seeks to expose the vulnerabilities and contradictions within those who position themselves as authoritative voices in such movements. “The people purporting to be our saviours are also shit scared and vulnerable” While he does not cite any specific real-world inspiration for his titular character, viewers in the UK – and likely beyond (as one YouTube commenter suggested, even voters aligned with Australia’s One Nation party might recognise parallels) – will inevitably draw their own comparisons. “What was interesting to me with this film is that the people purporting to be our saviours are also shit scared and vulnerable and, like, fucking deeply confused,” Karia reveals when discussing the film’s origins. He adds that his “real problem” lies with those in positions of power – their disingenuous nature and their “exploitation of real problems to forward their own careers,” a critique that resonates well beyond a single national context. <img class="size-large wp-image-42422" src="https://www.shortoftheweek.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/Vote-Gavin-Lyle-Aneil-Karia-05-640x360.jpeg" alt="Vote-Gavin-Lyle-Aneil-Karia" width="640" height="360" srcset="https://www.shortoftheweek.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/Vote-Gavin-Lyle-Aneil-Karia-05-300x169.jpeg 300w, https://www.shortoftheweek.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/Vote-Gavin-Lyle-Aneil-Karia-05-768x432.jpeg 768w, https://www.shortoftheweek.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/Vote-Gavin-Lyle-Aneil-Karia-05-640x360.jpeg 640w" sizes="(max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px" /> Model and actress Deba Hekmat (L) stars opposite Lowden in Vote Gavin Lyle Karia’s work here underscores the capacity of short film to engage with complex and immediate political issues. At a moment when debates around nationalism, identity, and representation continue to intensify, Vote Gavin Lyle operates less as a didactic or “preachy” statement and more as a reflective intervention – one that encourages critical engagement with the images and ideas that increasingly shape political opinion. While one YouTube commenter suggests file-sharing platforms like WeTransfer shouldn’t be ‘commissioning political propaganda’, we’re happy to not only see the director return to short film (2025 saw him direct his second feature, Hamlet) but continue to produce work that engages directly with contemporary issues while demonstrating the enduring potential of short film. A position the director himself clearly endorses: “There’s this unfortunate idea that the short film is something you do when you’re coming up, and then leave them behind and go into long form,” Karia states. “I just think they’re an amazing format to be more instinctive, more immediate.”
Bowen, a nonbinary Asian-American from Queens, tries to connect with their estranged father and help him deal with a poisonous fish bite.
When Bowen unexpectedly encounters their estranged father in the city late one night, they decide to meet and attempt to reconnect, while also trying to take care of a poisonous fish bite. With Yú Cì (Fish Bones), writer/director Kevin Xian Ming Yu pens a delicate and sensitive narrative about identity and community, employing an undeniably authentic approach to give the film a surprisingly effective poignancy and make it incredibly compelling. “I made this film to start empathetic conversations across generations within Chinese immigrant communities about queer, trans and nonbinary identities” “This film is inspired by the complicated ways in which my genderqueer and trans identity interacts with my Chinese immigrant family and community in Queens,” Yu confessed. Powerful slices of life are often based on a director’s own experience, and Fish Bones feels grounded, unafraid of its undramatic narrative structure. It therefore comes as no surprise when Yu shared that inspiration behind the film, adding, “when I was first exploring my gender identity, my uncle, who fishes frequently in Queens, experienced a strange poisonous fish bite that turned his hand purple”, an incident incorporated into the film in an almost metaphorical way. Not especially dialogue-heavy, the film instead relies on what remains unspoken. The camera has a lot of empathy and tenderness for its two protagonists, subverting expectations with its compassion. It depicts, with honesty, the fraught relationship between Bowen and their dad – one that is largely rooted in misunderstandings. “I made this film to start empathetic conversations across generations within Chinese immigrant communities about queer, trans and nonbinary identities,” Yu explained. As the film progresses, we watch the pair reconnect, their reserve and shyness ultimately leading to moments of vulnerability, which in turn makes the ending all the more resounding. <img class="size-large wp-image-42433" src="https://www.shortoftheweek.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/fish-bones-short-film-03-640x384.jpeg" alt="fish-bones-short-film" width="640" height="384" srcset="https://www.shortoftheweek.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/fish-bones-short-film-03-300x180.jpeg 300w, https://www.shortoftheweek.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/fish-bones-short-film-03-768x461.jpeg 768w, https://www.shortoftheweek.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/fish-bones-short-film-03-640x384.jpeg 640w" sizes="(max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px" /> “Through the filmmaking process, we grew closer and had conversations that created more understanding around my genderqueerness” – Yu discussing casting their father in the film Yu shot Fish Bones where they grew up, drawing on locations from their own community and working with mainly natural light. This approach removes unnecessary distraction, allowing the film’s quiet yet heavy emotional arc to take center stage while maintaining a very naturalistic look. All the performances in the short are impressive, even the mother! Yu actually cast their own parents in the film, and while they are not professional actors, their performances feel nuanced and genuine. The chemistry between Jiawei Huang, who plays Bowen, and Feng Yu (their dad) is particularly affecting, carrying much of the film’s emotional complexity. Fish Bones had its World Premiere at the 2025 edition of SXSW Film & TV and went on to be selected at multiple other festivals including the Palm Springs ShortFest, Nashville, NewFest and Provincetown – where it earned a Special Jury Mention. Their new short i saw you in the flood is already on the festival circuit, having premiered at the 2026 edition of SXSW Film & TV.
Celebrate May 4th with a journey into the Star Wars universe through this curated collection of fan films.
Star Wars is the culture’s great extended universe. In a time where personal algorithms have contributed to the nichification of interests and signalled the death of the “monoculture”, Star Wars has persevered as a popular juggernaut across film, books, comics, TV, and games. We think that this is important – both as something that preserves film’s traditional role as mass shared entertainment, but also the existence of story platform robust and popular enough to sustain diverse storytelling approaches – from blockbuster movies to the selections here today. We at Short of the Week have always had time for “fan films” and wrote at length about the phenomenon over a decade ago. These unofficial, uncommercial works are a pure labor of love from their creators, but they also perform critical work, exploring and maintaining these massive story projects. Star Wars is ground zero for the form, and George Lucas’ tacit approval of them laid the example for copyright owners ever after. Thus, on this May 4th, dubbed, in a brilliant piece of marketing, as “Star Wars Day” (say May the 4th…out loud if you don’t get it), we’re pleased to look back at some of the best Star Wars fan films ever made. Our short survey goes back to 1978 with what many consider the originator of the form, through the digital revolution of the early web, to much more recent films. Star Wars itself is at an interesting inflection point – the property’s steward of several years has departed, and its first theatrical film to come out of its television pivot hits screens this month to an uncertain reception. Fandom has, for good and ill, highly influenced the direction of its beloved properties, and fan films are a high-profile manifestation of this popular will. Furthermore, their creation is rapidly accelerating due to AI video generation. How will fan works influence this transition moment for Star Wars, and what will the profusion of visually impressive fan works do for interest in its official offerings? It’s a fascinating time for observers of a galaxy far far away… <img class="size-large wp-image-42440" src="https://www.shortoftheweek.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/best-star-wars-fan-films.png" alt="best-star-wars-fan-films" width="720" srcset="https://www.shortoftheweek.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/best-star-wars-fan-films-300x294.png 300w, https://www.shortoftheweek.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/best-star-wars-fan-films-768x752.png 768w, https://www.shortoftheweek.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/best-star-wars-fan-films-640x627.png 640w, https://www.shortoftheweek.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/best-star-wars-fan-films.png 889w" sizes="(max-width: 889px) 100vw, 889px" /> Click on image to view the collection on Shortverse
Science Says Watching Short of the Week Might Make You More Creative
Fight Brain rot with this collection of shorts that a new study suggests boosts creativity
A new academic study making the rounds—from researchers at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and covered everywhere from The Hollywood Reporter and Animation Magazine, to Medical Xpress, has found that viewing artistically curated short films can causally boost creative thinking. This is, of course, incredibly validating to us at Short of the Week, especially when we dug in deeper and learned the study sourced its artistic short films from our site! We wanted to know more, so we reached out to the study’s co-author, Madeleine Gross. What inspired the study and their use of our curation? Turns out, they needed to answer a deceptively tricky question: what actually counts as art in an experiment about creativity? Their solution was both practical and—if we may—flattering: “One of the biggest challenges in studying the psychological effects of art is defining what counts as art in the first place. We approached this by sourcing the films for our research from Short of the Week, a platform that uses a panel of industry professionals to curate films based on their artistic merit. This gave us a principled boundary between art and ‘non-art’… These promising early findings represent the strongest experimental test to date that art doesn’t just correlate with creativity — it causes it!” <img class="size-large wp-image-42430" src="https://www.shortoftheweek.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/aurevoirjerome-640x300.jpg" alt="Still from "Au Revoir Jerome" one of the films included in the study" width="640" height="300" srcset="https://www.shortoftheweek.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/aurevoirjerome-300x141.jpg 300w, https://www.shortoftheweek.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/aurevoirjerome-768x360.jpg 768w, https://www.shortoftheweek.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/aurevoirjerome-640x300.jpg 640w, https://www.shortoftheweek.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/aurevoirjerome.jpg 1280w" sizes="(max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px" /> Still from Au Revoir Jerome, one of the films included in the study: Full Playlist In the study, participants were split into groups and shown either a playlist of curated short films (yes, Gross provided their list for us to share!) or a control group of amateur “blooper reel” videos. The latter produced slightly more immediate joy—no surprise there—but the former led to significantly higher scores in tests measuring open-ended, flexible, and original thinking. The conclusion to be drawn is probably not a surprise to any of you who have found your attention trapped in the algorithmic vice grip of Big Tech—TikTok may lift your short-term mood, but short films might actually expand your mind. The playlist itself is not very long—five animated works that are, roughly, 7 minutes apiece, from contemporary artists like Lizzy Hobbs and Zohar Dvir. But, within that constraint, the team selected formally inventive, emotionally nuanced works that resist easy categorization and reward attention. That friction, the study suggests, is the point. When a film asks more of you due to the need for interpretation, ambiguity, and emotional attunement, it seems to exercise the same mental muscles that underpin creative thought. <img class="size-large wp-image-32771" src="https://www.shortoftheweek.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/Mercurys-Retrograde-Zohar-Dvir-03-640x360.jpg" alt="Mercurys-Retrograde-Zohar-Dvir" width="640" height="360" srcset="https://www.shortoftheweek.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/Mercurys-Retrograde-Zohar-Dvir-03-300x169.jpg 300w, https://www.shortoftheweek.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/Mercurys-Retrograde-Zohar-Dvir-03-768x432.jpg 768w, https://www.shortoftheweek.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/Mercurys-Retrograde-Zohar-Dvir-03-640x360.jpg 640w" sizes="(max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px" /> Still from Mercury’s Retrograde by Zohar Dvir. Full Playlist Does that sound familiar? I hope so; that’s kind of the thesis of the Short of the Week project—that short films aren’t just a format but a space for risk and invention, benefiting storytelling and visual culture at large. What this study offers is empirical backing for something that, I think, our fellow programmers, filmmakers, and audiences have long felt intuitively. So yes, we’re proud to have been part of the research. But more than that, we’re excited by what it implies. Not just that short films matter, but that engaging with them might leave you—subtly, cumulatively—thinking differently. Cheers to Madeleine Gross, her co-lead Jonathan Schooler, and the rest of their team. They’ve teased us that a new study (which also sources films from our curation) is in the works. In the meantime, consider this your friendly nudge to stop rewarding slop and elevate the inputs of your free time. Do it for the culture, do it for your brain! Watch The Creativity Fuel Playlist on Shortverse
As a nearby volcano is about to erupt, tensions rise between young lovers Mateo and Alejandra
Where the Black Sand Burns is a beautiful short film. I use that adjective in a literal sense – shot amid the natural splendor of the volcanic Canary Islands, featuring unusually striking cinematography, and anchored by a luminous central couple, director Lore Loyens’ tale of young love practically assaults you with its beauty. And while that phrasing might condition you to expect a turn – beauty as a substitute for substance – there’s no such caveat here. Loyens’ film may trace a familiar narrative shape, but its sensitivity to emotional nuance emerges as an equal achievement to its more obvious visual appeal. The film opens with the promise of something apocalyptic, as a volcano stirs to life on the edge of a small village. This event is not unusual to the community, nurtured in the shadow of the peak, but Mateo, who is rooted to the island, watches as Alejandra, his partner, begins to interpret the looming eruption as a final straw – an ultimatum to leave. What follows is less a narrative driven by the mechanics of disaster than one attuned to emotional drift, to the quiet, destabilizing realization that love and one’s direction in life don’t always align. The volcano, despite its narrative weight, recedes from the foreground as the film unfolds. You find yourself almost wishing for its presence to press in more insistently, but its absence is also its function, as it becomes atmosphere, a low, constant pressure shaping everything without needing to dominate it. “It can feel healing to dissolve into something larger than yourself” This tension between the monumental and the intimate, the external and the internal, is where Loyens’ film finds its footing. As she describes it, she was drawn to “how a place can mirror an emotional state… how it can feel healing to dissolve into something larger than yourself, yet also deeply unsettling to feel small within an overwhelming, all-powerful nature.” The volcanic landscape, thus, isn’t just a backdrop, but a kind of emotional register for the film. The push and pull between Mateo and Alejandra – between staying and leaving, attachment and autonomy – echoes the instability of the terrain itself. What’s striking is how immersive that dynamic becomes. Loyens resists over-explanation, instead constructing what she calls a “sensory experience of young love – something overwhelming, physical, and unpredictable.” The result is a film that pulls you into its rhythms rather than spelling them out, allowing interior and exterior realities to blur. Emotions aren’t articulated so much as absorbed, felt through gesture, proximity, and the charged stillness between characters. <img class="size-large wp-image-42417" src="https://www.shortoftheweek.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/blacksand-640x267.jpeg" alt="The landscape of the volcanic island provides" width="640" height="267" srcset="https://www.shortoftheweek.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/blacksand-300x125.jpeg 300w, https://www.shortoftheweek.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/blacksand-768x320.jpeg 768w, https://www.shortoftheweek.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/blacksand-640x267.jpeg 640w" sizes="(max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px" /> The landscape of the volcanic island provides the film’s “emotional register.” A large part of that immediacy comes from the film’s production approach. Shot on location with a cast composed largely of non-actors discovered on the island, Where the Black Sand Burns carries an unforced authenticity that keeps it grounded even as its imagery tends toward the rapturous. Loyens and her team worked with “a small, flexible crew, allowing [them] to respond to the unpredictability of nature and fully integrate it into the film’s language,” and you can feel that openness in the direction of the performances, and a seeming willingness to follow moments rather than stage them. This receptivity might be what most impresses me, and is a vital complement to the film’s themes and romantic visual sensibility. Loyens composes her images with a boldness and polish that is likely to result in her becoming a commercial directing star in her native Belgium – sun-drenched skin, sweeping vistas, bodies in silhouette against elemental forces, all feature prominently. But, throughout, she remains intuitively responsive to her performers, attuned to the fragile, often contradictory emotions that animate them. It’s a difficult balance to strike, and one she navigates with impressive precociousness. It’s also not a one-off. With her follow-up, Between Day and Dawn, already making its way through the festival circuit, Loyens appears to be building a body of work that pairs visual ambition with emotional permeability – films that don’t just depict feeling, but allow you to sit inside it. Where the Black Sand Burns is an assured, evocative statement of intent for an exciting new artist. Consider me a fan.
Brooklyn high school seniors share their candid feelings with each other during their last Quaker meeting of the year.
High school students often have so many bottled-up, confusing feelings that they rarely express, let alone have the proper forum in which to do so. In Quaker, with a charming approach rooted in kindness and honesty, writer/director Giovanna Molina crafts a narrative that recreates the raw intimacy of the last Quaker meeting for seniors on the verge of graduation. “I started to reflect upon this period of my life and the particularity of a Quaker education” Before going any further, it is worth briefly explaining what a Quaker school is for those unfamiliar. While Quakerism originated as a branch of Christianity, where values such as community, equality, peace, and integrity are central, Quaker schools often have students and faculty members who do not necessarily identify as Quakers, but align with the education system and its values. A common practice within these schools is the Quaker Meeting, during which everyone sits in silence for an hour, and at any given moment someone can stand and share anything that’s on their mind to the rest of the community, as they sit and listen. “Speaking your mind, or speaking ‘truth to power,’ was encouraged”, Molina explained. <img class="size-large wp-image-42384" src="https://www.shortoftheweek.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/Quaker_Still_5-640x480.jpeg" alt="Quaker Short Film Giovanna Molina" width="640" height="480" srcset="https://www.shortoftheweek.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/Quaker_Still_5-300x225.jpeg 300w, https://www.shortoftheweek.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/Quaker_Still_5-768x576.jpeg 768w, https://www.shortoftheweek.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/Quaker_Still_5-640x480.jpeg 640w" sizes="(max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px" /> “We shot in Brooklyn, in the actual Quaker meeting house I grew up attending, and some of my former classmates, teachers, and neighbors appear in the film” – Molina on the production of Quaker. Molina actually attended one of these schools herself, and sat through many of these meetings. After graduation, she realized how powerful those moments actually were on multiple levels. “At the time, I took for granted how unique our Wednesday meetings were, but with many years of distance from high school, I started to reflect upon this period of my life and the particularity of a Quaker education”, she confessed. Having a time dedicated to self-reflection on a weekly basis, and a safe space to express oneself feels particularly unique – especially at that age – and often leads to insightful and poignant moments. “With this film, I aimed to document the power of meeting within the context of a coming-of-age narrative and share it with those unfamiliar with Quaker practices”, Molina added. Written with Louisa Grenham, who went to the same school, the screenplay’s authenticity is undeniable. Every single line is filled with an angst and disarming honesty that anyone will be able to relate to. While the situation is specific, the feelings expressed are universal for anyone on the precipice of adulthood and beyond. The dialogue, camera movements, and pacing work together to create a sense of intimacy that invites the viewer to sit down and take part in the meeting. <img class="size-large wp-image-42383" src="https://www.shortoftheweek.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/Quaker_Still_4-640x480.jpeg" alt="Quaker Short Film Giovanna Molina" width="640" height="480" srcset="https://www.shortoftheweek.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/Quaker_Still_4-300x225.jpeg 300w, https://www.shortoftheweek.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/Quaker_Still_4-768x576.jpeg 768w, https://www.shortoftheweek.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/Quaker_Still_4-640x480.jpeg 640w" sizes="(max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px" /> S/W alum Allegra Leguizamo (L) stars in front of the camera in Quaker The writing here is clever though, with the perfect balance of vulnerability and humor. With DP Vittoria Campaner, the film is shot in a very naturalistic way; the framing and the choice to use black and white allow us to focus on what is being said, and how it is received. Editor Danielle Criqui shapes the material to orchestrate a perfect rhythm, effectively conveying the lived experience of attending the meeting. At first glance, some might mistake Quaker for a documentary, while others might have spotted S/W alum Allegra Leguizamo (Flash Warning) in the cast. The ensemble Molina and her team built carries a very compelling energy throughout the film, giving it an immersive dimension. Most of us will likely never have attended a Quaker meeting, yet this film makes that experience feel familiar and just like the director, it has us yearning for a space where you are able to speak your truth in such a supportive arena. Quaker had its World Premiere at the 2025 edition of the Berlinale in the Generation section. Ahead of its online premiere today, it hit the 2025 festival circuit and was awarded Best Narrative Short at Bend. Molina is currently working on her feature debut Kismet, which is already in production.
What seems to be a burgeoning romance between two Indigenous people takes a sinister turn as one grows suspicious of the other.
Billy and Riley’s date is going well – so well, in fact, that she invites him back to her place. She can barely hide her excitement at connecting with a fellow Indigenous person, but could this positive reaction be hiding something darker? Writer-director ishkwaazhe Shane McSauby blends romcom, dark comedy, and genre in The Beguiling, crafting an effective thriller based on real-life occurrences. “The idea of taking on a Native identity that isn’t yours is so ridiculous that dark comedy felt perfect” “Non-Native people knowingly claiming Native identity has really exploded lately”, McSauby explains, adding that he has heard accounts of “people stealing real Native people’s stories of historical trauma and using them as their own to secure jobs, funding, or social capital.” While this makes for a good premise for a film, it also reflects the discourse around identity and generational trauma and how they’ve been “commodified”. Discussing the tone he built in The Beguiling, McSauby explains: “The idea of taking on a Native identity that isn’t yours is so ridiculous that dark comedy felt perfect. But stealing people’s real stories of trauma is also sinister, so a mix of horror felt like the right fit.” Tokenization and identity are complex, nuanced issues that for some can be easier to avoid. With The Beguiling, McSauby keeps the conversation active, avoiding any pretension. Through an entertaining lens, he subtly addresses the topic and lets his audience sit with – and grasp – the full depth of his narrative. By cleverly combining comedy and genre, the filmmaker serves both his narrative and how he intends to convey it. Juggling the two perfectly, the film constantly keeps us on our toes, uncertain what will happen next, and questioning the actual presence of a threat. <img class="size-large wp-image-42378" src="https://www.shortoftheweek.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/the-beguiling-short-film-01-640x480.jpeg" alt="the-beguiling-short-film" width="640" height="480" srcset="https://www.shortoftheweek.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/the-beguiling-short-film-01-300x225.jpeg 300w, https://www.shortoftheweek.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/the-beguiling-short-film-01-768x576.jpeg 768w, https://www.shortoftheweek.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/the-beguiling-short-film-01-640x480.jpeg 640w" sizes="(max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px" /> Benairen Kane stars as Billy in The Beguiling Shot by S/W alum Shaandiin Tome (Long Line of Ladies), the cinematography echoes the subtle tonal balance McSauby created. In conjunction with the sound design and the pacing crafted by editor Matt Laud, The Beguiling places us firmly in Billy’s shoes, taking us on the emotional roller coaster of his encounter with Riley – frequently shifting between the sense of a date going great and the creeping sensation this could all be a nightmare. Benairen Kane, as Billy – the male protagonist, is the perfect good guy in this story. He makes his character instantly likeable and easy to root for. He injects so much genuine kindness in his performance, creating a strong emotional connection between his character and the audience, while his growing disbelief is just as compelling. Opposite him, Kim Savarino delivers an equally perfect performance, conveying just the right amount of crazy so that it never comes across as farcical, but so the comedy and the genre still land so convincingly. The Beguiling had its World Premiere at the 2024 edition of TIFF and went on to be selected at SXSW and the Palm Springs ShortFest. It also won the 7th Student Short Film Showcase, presented by The Gotham and Focus Features, who released the film on YouTube.
Stuck in all day Zoom meetings, a programmer daydreams about the stranger next door—until she finally gets a chance at love.
It’s easy to become preoccupied with people we don’t truly know – the stranger we pass each day, the fellow gym-goer who shares our routine, the kind assistant at a local shop – but often these obsessions are best left at a distance. It’s precisely this kind of infatuation that underpins Max Distance, Marissa Goldman’s off-kilter SXSW comedy, which follows a daydreaming computer programmer, Erica, who spends an inordinate amount of time in unnecessary Zoom meetings fantasising about her neighbour, Nat. It’s in these two interwoven spaces that Goldman’s film finds much of its relatability. If modern life has trained us in anything, it’s the ability to half-attend endless meetings while simultaneously fixating on people we barely know. As someone prone to daydreaming, I find this particularly familiar – the ease with which attention drifts, whether in virtual calls or everyday encounters, toward something more compelling elsewhere. It is, however, in its humorous portrayal of infatuation that Max Distance resonates most strongly. Erica emerges as a protagonist who is immediately recognisable and broadly sympathetic, even when her behaviour becomes questionable. <img class="size-large wp-image-42326" src="https://www.shortoftheweek.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/Max-Distance-Marissa-Goldman-04-640x360.jpeg" alt="Anna Seregina stars as Erica in Max Distance" width="640" height="360" srcset="https://www.shortoftheweek.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/Max-Distance-Marissa-Goldman-04-300x169.jpeg 300w, https://www.shortoftheweek.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/Max-Distance-Marissa-Goldman-04-768x432.jpeg 768w, https://www.shortoftheweek.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/Max-Distance-Marissa-Goldman-04-640x360.jpeg 640w" sizes="(max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px" /> Anna Seregina stars as Erica in Max Distance “It felt like a good way to express some feelings of isolation and the separate lanes we are all put in in the Internet era”, Goldman explains as she discusses how Max Distance begun from the simple act of looking through windows to expand into something bigger. With the film’s title referring to both the emotional and social distance created by contemporary digital life and to the terminology used by dating apps to define one’s potential “discovery pool.” In this sense, Goldman’s short participates in a growing body of work examining the quiet distortions and disconnections produced by an increasingly internet-mediated existence. However, for Goldman – who serves as both writer and director on Max Distance – the film is not only an opportunity to contribute to discussions on modern life, but also a step forward in her own development as a filmmaker, and a chance to create something she “felt proud of.” Considering the direction she saw her work taking, Goldman chose to “play with visual comedy” in Max Distance, bringing together the various skills she has developed throughout her career into a single, attention-grabbing piece. <img class="size-large wp-image-42324" src="https://www.shortoftheweek.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/Max-Distance-Marissa-Goldman-06-640x360.jpeg" alt="Max Distance Marissa Goldman" width="640" height="360" srcset="https://www.shortoftheweek.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/Max-Distance-Marissa-Goldman-06-300x169.jpeg 300w, https://www.shortoftheweek.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/Max-Distance-Marissa-Goldman-06-768x432.jpeg 768w, https://www.shortoftheweek.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/Max-Distance-Marissa-Goldman-06-640x360.jpeg 640w" sizes="(max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px" /> S/W regular David Brown stars as neighbour, Nat, in Max Distance Acknowledging that she often approaches projects in a “form-first” manner, it is unsurprising that the film’s visual language plays a central role. “I do a lot of storyboarding and moodboarding,” the filmmaker explains. As an After Effects animator, she also completed all of the VFX work herself, while crediting cinematographer Victor Inglés and colourist Gabe Sanchez for helping the film’s colours “pop.” With much of the film already fully formed in her mind before it reaches the screen, Max Distance functions not only as an impressive calling card for Goldman, but also as an illuminating glimpse into a distinctive creative sensibility – one that appears to have a very bright future ahead.