Affirming our commitment to review the finest of world cinema regardless of length, The Film Verdict’s Short Films column is a unique feature that recognizes the growing influence of shorts on the film industry and the role they play in the careers of young filmmakers in particular. The reviews are 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 DocFest and the London Short Film Festival and in 2019 founded ALT/KINO, which screens and publishes writing about experimental film. He is the artistic director of the Alpha Film Festival, the first shorts festival in the metaverse.
$75,000
First person testimonies and 3D modelling are effectively combined in Moïse Togo’s harrowing short documentary about the horrific violence faced by albino people across Africa.
Bestia
The inner life and fragmenting psyche of a secret police agent form the basis of Hugo Covarrubias’s exemplary and sinister stop-motion animation set during the Chilean military dictatorship
The Headhunter’s Daughter
A young woman navigates the Cordilleran highlands to seek fame in the big city in Don Josephus Raphael Eblahan’s mysterious, Western-tinged drama.
Love Stories on the Move
Ilinca H?rnu? gives a captivating performance in Carina Gabriela Da?oveanu’s restrained but perceptive drama about a taxi driver longing for romance amidst a faltering marriage.
Zoon
Jonatan Schwenk follows the award-winning ‘Sog’ with another beguiling animated short that wordlessly meditates on our relationship to the natural world via a group of axolotls and the people that eat them.