Short of the WeekShort of the Week
type: channel
description: The most innovative storytellers of our time. Submit your film at www.shortoftheweek.com/submit
date: 2026-05-25T14:00:27Z
update period: hourly
update frequency: 1
update base: 2000-01-01T12:00+00:00
items: Dear Home of Scars
items: How to Bury Your Father
items: Un Petit Home (A Tiny Man)
items: Crow Man
items: Short of the Week Named BIFA-Qualifying Online Channel
items: Steak Dinner
items: The Snip
items: 21st Century Short Film Palme d'Or Winners
items: Jour de vent (Windy Day)
items: Finding Daddy
items: The Most Perfect Perfect Person
items: A Black Hole Near Kent County
items: Vote Gavin Lyle
items: Yú Cì (Fish Bones)
items: The Best Star Wars Fan Films
items: Science Says Watching Short of the Week Might Make You More Creative
items: Where the Black Sand Burns
items: Quaker
items: The Beguiling
items: Max Distance

Dear Home of Scars
type: item
date: 2026-05-25T10:00:00+00:00
creator: Jason Sondhi
description: A new installation by Ibrahim Mahama exposes the colonial ‘scars in the landscape’ in Northern Ghana and inspires the local community.
encoded: 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 Longtim…

How to Bury Your Father
type: item
date: 2026-05-21T10:00:00+00:00
creator: Céline Roustan
description: A young man returns home and spends the night trying to fulfill his father's dying wish for a proper burial.
encoded: 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/u…

Un Petit Home (A Tiny Man)
type: item
date: 2026-05-20T10:00:00+00:00
creator: Rob Munday
description: As a husband faces the consequences of his actions, he perhaps begins to realize that maybe size does in fact matter.
encoded: 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…

Crow Man
type: item
date: 2026-05-19T10:00:00+00:00
creator: Mariana Rekka
description: 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.
encoded: 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…

Short of the Week Named BIFA-Qualifying Online Channel
type: item
date: 2026-05-18T10:00:00+00:00
creator: Short of the Week
description: Short of the Week announced as one of just nine qualifying online channel for the BIFA Best British Short Film award
encoded: 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.

Steak Dinner
type: item
date: 2026-05-15T10:00:00+00:00
creator: Rob Munday
description: 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.
encoded: 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.shorto…

The Snip
type: item
date: 2026-05-14T10:30:00+00:00
creator: Rob Munday
description: 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.
encoded: 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 in…

21st Century Short Film Palme d'Or Winners
type: item
date: 2026-05-13T12:30:00+00:00
creator: Jason Sondhi
description: 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.
encoded: 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 si…

Jour de vent (Windy Day)
type: item
date: 2026-05-12T10:00:00+00:00
creator: Mariana Rekka
description: When a powerful wind disrupts life in a park, several strangers are swept into intersecting paths that carry them toward unexpected new horizons.
encoded: 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 …

Finding Daddy
type: item
date: 2026-05-11T10:00:00+00:00
creator: Céline Roustan
description: 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.
encoded: 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/…

The Most Perfect Perfect Person
type: item
date: 2026-05-08T10:38:53+00:00
creator: Jason Sondhi
description: 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.
encoded: 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…

A Black Hole Near Kent County
type: item
date: 2026-05-07T10:00:00+00:00
creator: Rob Munday
description: 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.
encoded: 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 fil…

Vote Gavin Lyle
type: item
date: 2026-05-06T10:00:00+00:00
creator: Rob Munday
description: A discomforting portrait of Gavin Lyle, a middle-England family man and aspiring right-wing parliamentary candidate played by actor Jack Lowden
encoded: 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="…

Yú Cì (Fish Bones)
type: item
date: 2026-05-05T10:00:00+00:00
creator: Céline Roustan
description: Bowen, a nonbinary Asian-American from Queens, tries to connect with their estranged father and help him deal with a poisonous fish bite.
encoded: 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…

The Best Star Wars Fan Films
type: item
date: 2026-05-04T10:00:00+00:00
creator: Short of the Week
description: Celebrate May 4th with a journey into the Star Wars universe through this curated collection of fan films.
encoded: 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…

Science Says Watching Short of the Week Might Make You More Creative
type: item
date: 2026-05-01T12:30:00+00:00
creator: Jason Sondhi
description: Fight Brain rot with this collection of shorts that a new study suggests boosts creativity
encoded: 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 inclu…

Where the Black Sand Burns
type: item
date: 2026-04-30T10:05:00+00:00
creator: Jason Sondhi
description: As a nearby volcano is about to erupt, tensions rise between young lovers Mateo and Alejandra
encoded: 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 emoti…

Quaker
type: item
date: 2026-04-29T10:00:00+00:00
creator: Céline Roustan
description: Brooklyn high school seniors share their candid feelings with each other during their last Quaker meeting of the year.
encoded: 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 …

The Beguiling
type: item
date: 2026-04-28T10:00:00+00:00
creator: Céline Roustan
description: What seems to be a burgeoning romance between two Indigenous people takes a sinister turn as one grows suspicious of the other.
encoded: 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" src…

Max Distance
type: item
date: 2026-04-27T10:00:00+00:00
creator: Rob Munday
description: Stuck in all day Zoom meetings, a programmer daydreams about the stranger next door—until she finally gets a chance at love.
encoded: 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 Distanc…