Affirming our commitment to review the finest of world cinema regardless of length, The Film Verdict is proud to announce a new Short Films column which will make its debut during the Sundance Film Festival and will be a notable feature of our IFFR Rotterdam coverage. The reviews will be curated by London-based critic Ben Nicholson (ben@thefilmverdict.com), whose expert opinions have appeared in Sight & Sound, MUBI Notebook, Little White Lies and Hyperallergic. He has programmed for Sheffield Doc/Fest and the London Short Film Festival. In 2019 he founded ALT/KINO which screens, and publishes writing about, experimental film and artists’ moving image.
Daughter and Son
Sachiko and Ming share an apartment and predilection for role-play in Cheng Yu’s enigmatic and intriguing exploration of one relationship through the prism of many.
Les Chenilles
Two Levantine immigrants working in a Lyon café bond in this meditation on friendship and the long fingers of history which claimed the Berlinale Shorts top prize.
The Beads
Two young women travel to a remote cottage so one of them can administer a chemical abortion in this languorous vignette of rebirth and sororal care.
Dipped in Black
This deeply personal documentary follows an Australian Aboriginal man as he escapes the chokehold of the big city to reconnect with Country.
A Kind of Testament
This strange and engrossing short blends a surreal and slippery story about a bizarre online relationship with Stephen Vuillemin’s glorious animation.
Terra Mater – Mother Land
Set amidst a landscape of mountainous detritus, Kantarama Gahigiri’s short is an abstract but strikingly powerful rejoinder against the exploitation of Africa.
Waking Up in Silence
This tenderly moving documentary observes a group of Ukrainian children adapting to their new lives, after having been re-homed in former military barracks in Germany.
Jill, Uncredited
This thoughtful compilation film draws our gaze to something unregistered across decades of British cinema and television – the face of a particular extra, Jill Goldston.
Last Things
The nature and potential of non-human evolution are explored to disquieting effect in Deborah Stratman’s essayistic blend of science fact and science fiction.
Human Nature
A couple reflect on a failed pregnancy in the midst of the pandemic in Monica Lima’s tactile and delicate drama about the desire to nurture and propagate.
Prosinecki
An ageing footballer reflects on his career in this layered rumination on the nature of the beautiful game adapted from the filmmaker’s own short story.
Tito
Filmed on a tiny camera smuggled into Haiti’s National Penitentiary, this portrait of an inmate is upsetting, enraging, and deeply moving.
Night and Fear
Sound and images captured during several years of documentary making form the basis for this haunting essayistic meditation on fear and its effects.
ALiEN0089
Valeria Hofmann’s uncanny and unsettling film explores the collisions between a video game and the real world, when a young woman attempts to call out online harassment.
Uncanny Me
As we stand on the edge of increasing digital frontiers, Katharina Pethke’s thought-provoking film explores the mechanics and implications of creating a virtual doppelganger.
Mother Earth’s Inner Organs
Ana Bravo-Perez searches for the demons released by the extraction of fossil fuels from her native Colombia in this disquieting hybrid documentary.
Devil’s Peak
Simon Liu utilises his familiar febrile aesthetic as a way to explore and represent Hong Kong’s tumultuous recent history, to deeply disquieting effect.
Motorrodillo
This observational documentary follows the travails of a female driver who is part a grass-roots public transit system connecting the villages of northern Colombia.
Sub Terra
Life is seen through the eyes of a mysterious creature living beneath the soil in this curious but at times unsettling underground animation from Jeffrey Zablotny.
The Mechanics of Fluids
Gala Hernandez Lopez’s essay film addresses the incel phenomena from a position of fascination and empathy, seeking to understand the pain of isolation in a connected world.International Leipzig Festival for Documentary and Animated Film