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.
I Would Like to Rage
Chloe Galibert-Laine’s latest video essay, I Would Like to Rage, reflects on the place of rage online and through this lens explores the blurred lines between authenticity and performativity
An Asian Ghost Story
Mass wig exportation becomes the lens through which the fascinating, spectral doc An Asian Ghost Story explores Hong Kong’s late 20th-century modernisation and position between East and West.
Compound Eyes of Tropical
One of the traditional fables of Sang Kancil, the wily mouse-deer, is brought exquisitely to life in Zhang Xu Zhan’s electrifying, otherworldly animation, Compound Eyes of Tropical
Lumene: Privatisation
In the complex and thought-provoking essay film, Lumene: Privatisation, David Shongo reflects on the commodification of cultural memory and the lasting impacts of insidious colonial impositions.
Zima
The chill is both atmospheric and emotional in Zima, a scratchy, punkish, magical realist animation about life in a quiet, snow-laden fishing village.
Three Windows on South West
An ostensibly simplistic documentary about a flat in Kyiv, Three Windows on South West uses incidental memories to paint a fleeting collective portrait of another time.
We Are the Hollow Men
Rati Oneli’s phlegmatic drama, We Are the Hollow Men, depicts the difficult relationship between an estranged father and son when the latter returns home after his mother’s death.
Pirsas
Angelica Maria Torres Tamayo works through a personal tragedy in Pirsas, a deeply affecting documentary about a family trauma and the prospect of recovery.
Amma ki Katha (My Amma’s Tale)
History, folklore, and contemporary realities intertwine in Amma ki Katha, Nehal Vyas’ essayistic meditation on national aspiration and how stories become enmeshed in state oppression.
Single Light
A young woman must deal with the physical and psychological bruises of a sexual assault in Shaylee Atary’s powerful dramatic short, Single Light.
Trailer of a Film That Will Never Exist: “Phony Wars”
Godard reaches from beyond with one final film, a coarse and compelling act of montage, an expressive audiovisual treatment for a never-to-be-made made feature, Phony Wars.
Grill
The cruelty of an uncaring welfare state is brought into sharp relief in Jade Hærem Aksnes’s stomach-churning satirical drama about poverty, Grill.
Seaweed
A young boy grieving the loss of his mother forms a bond with a desert drifter in the heart-warming Israeli drama, Seaweed.
Our Males and Females
A mother and father are confronted with an agonising dilemma as they attempt to prepare the body of their young transgender child for burial in Ahmad Alyaseer’s ‘Our Males and Females’.
Dream Maker
A man uses virtual reality to experience and retouch the memory of his deceased daughter in this poignant, thought-provoking Iranian sci-fi, Dream Maker.
Cleaner
A tentative friendship begins between a cleaner and the woman who employs her in Cleaner, a delicately wrought drama about relationships and their boundaries.
Wander to Wonder
The miniature beings that starred in an 80s television show slowly unravel in Wander to Wonder, a surreal animation that riffs on an enchanting children’s story trope.
We Should All Be Futurists
Silent film footage is repurposed in We Should All Be Futurists, a deliciously comic reimagining of Marinetti’s man-machine hybrid as a novel – intimate – cure for female hysteria.
Sentimental Stories
A largely deserted port plays host to subtle drama unraveling at a glacially pace in Xandra Popescu’s strangely beguiling study in stasis, Sentimental Stories.
Sea Salt
The inconsistencies of adolescence are the challenges of burgeoning womanhood are central to Leila Basma’s knotty and intoxicating coming-of-age short, Sea Salt.