Now in it's fifth iteration and for the second time at Picturehouse Central in the heart of England's capital, Sundance Film Festival London seems to be steadily growing in audience awareness and stepping out of the shadow of its US Big Brother.

It's still tightly tied to the "original" though: Over the course of the weekend from June 1st to 4th, a selection of films from this year's festival in January, and additional panels, were taking place for interested audiences from the UK and all over Europe (I flew in from Vienna myself), who can't or won't make the trip to Utah.

Although in scale much smaller, one still gets to see and meet programmers from the festival like Mike Plante (Senior Programmer and Chief Shorts Programmer) or Festival Director John Cooper, as well as writer/directors and stars such as Miguel Arteta, Salma Hayek, Michael Showalter and David Lowery.

Plus, in a very pleasant turn of events, almost all the filmmakers from the UK Shorts Program were in attendance and at hand for a quick Q&A after the screening. We got to meet the team behind the excellent Dawn of Deaf, which will be featured on Short of the Week in the next few weeks – as well as three other films that played the UK Shorts program: Tough, Robot & Scarecrow and Fish Story will all be available soon to watch on our site.

So lets get to the two short film programs: Much like the feature film line-up, the films shown at Sundance Film Festival London are a selection of those screened at the 2017 event in Park City.

Whereas the features represent a nice mixture of smaller-scale, daring work (Bitch), more commercial prospects (The Big Sick), documentaries (Chasing Coral) and Midnight fare (Bushwick), the short film selection is even more curious.

Sundance Film Festival Short Film Tour

A program of 7 shorts showcasing a mixture of American and International fiction, experimental, animation and documentary films all in one sitting, the program started with Kristen Stewart's directorial debut Come Swim - the weakest and yet most high-profile entry in the line-up.

This isn't meant as a mockery of the star and her abilities as a filmmaker, which are evident in her specific voice as a writer/director, but one can still sense that she is trying to find her footing as a creative behind the camera.

The kind of film that usually gets left behind by filmmakers as first steps in film school (or outside of it) – with a thin plot, partly under-saturated visuals and repetitive Malick-esque voice-over – an actress-turned-filmmaker like Stewart doesn't have the luxury of developing her skills without the spotlight shone on her. Come Swim displays that this can be a blessing and a curse at the same time, but I can't imagine any circumstance in which a film like this would have been featured if it weren't from such a prominent industry figure. For better or worse, I couldn't help but view the rest of the films in direct comparison to this selection.

Followed by the fun, fast and effective 5 Films About Technology by Peter Huang (which we already featured), the audience's reaction once more provided proof that a clever idea and skilful execution are worth more than celebrity status.

Maximilien Van Aertryck & Axel Danielson's Swedish documentary Ten Meter Tower proved a clear audience favorite. Its simple premise and set-up - a few static cameras capturing various people on the ten meter diving board in a public swimming pool, fighting with their fears of jumping - obviously resonating with all that who viewed it.

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Pussy (Cipka) by Renata Gąsiorowska[/caption]

The absurd animation Pussy (the film's title is NOT misleading) from Renata Gasiorowska and Francisca Alegria's fiction entry And the Whole Sky Fit in the Dead Cow’s Eye rounded out the vast spectrum of the program's selection, while two other American films were dealing with the lives of people you might call on the fringes of society.

In Marshall Tyler's Night Shift, executive produced by Viola Davis, a black actor has to make ends meet as a men's restroom attendant at a night club, which makes for an interesting character study in combination with the depiction of a very specific microcosm.

Anu Valia's Lucia, Before and After gives us a glimpse into the reality of a woman dealing with poverty, specifically around her decision to get an abortion. The natural approach to the scenes providing a sensitive depitction reminiscent of 1990s independent films.

UK Shorts

If one needed a compact reminder of what is possible in short filmmaking in terms of innovative storytelling, this program made a strong case for why we love this format so much.

The emotionally tense and thrilling Dawn of the Deaf by Rob Savage has more going on than most longer films, and I hope its feature film version will come to fruition so we can see if it expands on the promise of this breathtaking short. As mentioned, you will be able to see the film for yourself on Short of the Week in the next few weeks.

As is the case with Jennifer Zheng's Tough, an animated re-telling of the filmmaker's conversation with her mother about the latter's past as a child in Mao's China.

robot-scarecrow

Another upcoming S/W feature is Kibwe Tavares' (Jonah & Robots of Brixton) Robot & Scarecrow, a visually stunning tale about the love between, well, a robot and a scarecrow. Commissioned to be shot at an actual summer music festival, which makes the visuals and combination of live action and CGI even more impressive, this is another short which shows off the incredible visual arsenal of the Factory Fifteen studio

Shola Amoo's powerful short Dear Mr. Shakespeare is another commissioned piece. Using performance art and interpretations of writer Phoebe Boswell's thoughts concerning the bard's work, in relation to today's questions of racial identity, it's a film that resonates long after viewing.

The tension caused by race and its societal implications were also at the core of Rubika Shah's s documentary White Riot: London, which took a closer look at a time in 1970s Britain when the National Front and the topic of immigration divided the country. Current renditions of texts from the time only emphasize how much history is repeating itself and how important films like this can be to avoid further past mistakes.

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Sundance Shorts Programmer Mike Plante with Rob Savage (Dawn of the Deaf), Leo Leigh (Mother), Hamid Ahmadi (In the Hills), Jennifer Zheng (Tough), Shola Amoo (Dear Mr. Shakespeare), Rubika Shah (White Riot: London), Kibwe Tavares (Robot & Scarecrow)[/caption]

The immigrant experience was tackled in another, more unusual way in Hamid Ahmadi's In the Hills, in which we see the behind-the-scenes of a Fish & Chips joint and the man who works at the counter and enjoys three-ways with random couples in his free time. This is not your average immigrant's tale.

With Mother, Leo Leigh takes a darkly humorous look at death and grief, with two socially awkward brothers dealing with their mother's passing. Just from the tone of this dark comedy one might be able to tell that this film couldn't have been made anywhere else than in the UK.

And last but not least, we were impressed by the warmth and peculiar humor of Charlie Lyne's Fish Story (watch his previous short Copycat here), in which the filmmaker traces back the roots of a very fishy event. Told through voice-over narration in combination with tableau-style imagery and direct-to-camera interviews, Fish Story is the type of congenial documentary that just puts a big smile on your face.

So be sure to keep an eye open for our upcoming films from the Sundance Film Festival London 2017 line-up. We hope you'll enjoy them us much as we did and want to thank the organizers of the festival for having us. It was great to be a part of Sundance London and maybe we'll meet some of you next year.

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Short of the Week team members Serafima Serafimova, Georg Csarmann, Paul Hunter, Rob Munday[/caption]