With the end of 2021 just on the horizon (where did the year go?), once Halloween has passed, here at S/W HQ we'll start making end of year plans - awards, round-ups etc. In the final quarter of the year, we'll continue to bring you the best short films available online, but this time also provides our team with a period of reflection, one where we can look back at all we achieved over the last 12-months and make plans for the next 12 (and beyond).

These Best of the Month posts provide a handy snapshot of what happened each month and a quick reminder of the films we really loved from our curation (we love them all, but just like with children, it's hard not to have favourites). With that in mind, our coverage in September saw us feature 15 shorts (it was a quiet month for us), delve into the film selections at three festivals (TIFF, Encounters & LFF), provide a filmmaker update and talk to new start-up X4Y (who are looking to turn the short film community into the world's biggest commercial production house).

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TEAM FAVOURITES

From the titles we featured on S/W throughout September, subjects ranged from famous cruising spots in the NYC gay scene to alien invasions and while we featured a handful of shorts around the five-minute mark, we also featured one of the longest shorts we'll showcase on our platform (we try to stick to the belief that a film should come in at the sub 40-min mark - although we have broken this rule on occasion). From this selection, the team voted for the favourites and the results saw us boil down a month's worth of content to a trio of titles that include a Sundance winner, an ambitious animation and the perfect summation of parenthood:

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Wochenbett (Postpartum) BY Henriette Rietz

It feels almost impossible to sum up the change having children has on your life, so it's great credit to director Henriette Rietz that she perfectly captures the onslaught of motherhood in under 5-minutes. Funny, insightful and heartfelt, fellow S/W writer Serafima praised Wochenbett (Postpartum) for containing more emotion than a feature-length film and she's not wrong - it's an unforgettable watch.. – Rob Munday

[READ THE FULL REVIEW]

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Don't go Tellin' your Momma BY Topaz Jones & Rubberband

A shining example of what is possible in the "visual album" format, this heralded Sundance-winner combines the contemporary funk-influenced music of artist Topaz Jones with astonishing visual creativity. Melding skits, documentary, and activist thought, we journey with Jones into his lifetime's education into his own Blackness. – Jason Sondhi

[READ THE FULL REVIEW]

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5 ans après la guerre (5 years after the war) by Samuel Albaric, Martin Wiklund and Ulysse Lefort

One of the most ambitious and impressive animations I've seen in a while, bringing to life a deeply personal story that's funny, charming and compelling in equal measures – Serafima Serafimova

[READ THE FULL REVIEW]

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MOST VIEWED

Lah Gah by Cécile Brun

We like to think we're good judges when it comes to which short films will perform well online, but this isn't what the S/W curation is all about. We've passed over many titles that we know would perform well online because they didn't fit in with the S/W ethos. On the flip-side, we also feature films that showcase all the elements we love in short film, even if we think they won't be "big hitters" online. Cécile Brun's Lah Gah was one such film...or so I thought. Experimental animation doesn't often draw big audiences on the internet, so we expected Brun's seven-minute abstract exploration of grief and memory to be one that appealed to a select few, but the stats prove this wasn't the case. Clocking up over 50k views on Vimeo since it was launched (a very healthy number for a Staff Picked film nowadays) and with our site analytics showing it to be our most popular pick of the whole of 2021 (not just September), overtaking the Oscar-nominated White Eye, Lah Gah is a refreshing example of a festival favourite translating its popularity from theatres to online, something that certainly isn't always the case.

[READ THE FULL REVIEW]

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WATCH PAST BEST OF THE MONTH SELECTIONS