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.
Study of a Fight
A simple premise yields increasingly complex results in Marie Suul Brobakke’s dissection of a romantic relationship between two actors rehearsing a scene.
Abyss
In partnering with Google’s Image Recognition AI, Jeppe Lange has constructed a 100mph frenzy of match-cutting that is strange, rhythmic and at times somewhat profound.
Heroines
Communal mythologies and the importance of historical forebears are explored in Marina Herrera’s quietly humorous hybrid documentary about a rebellious Indigenous woman.
Haulout
Evgenia and Maxim Arbugaeva’s astonishing documentary captures the annual arrival of thousands of walruses on a remote beach in the Russian Arctic in awesome intimacy.
It’s Raining Frogs Outside
Apocalypse anxiety, discomfort in the childhood home, and the effects of enforced isolation make for a heady brew in Maria Estela Paiso’s multimedia fever dream.
North Terminal
A new documentary from Lucrecia Martel explores communal creativity and expressive performance by bringing together marginalised artists in the north of Argentina.
Trap
Anastasia Veber’s prize-winning drama is an evocative exploration of the lives of young people in contemporary Russia caught between aggression and eroticism, isolation and intimacy.
Memoir of a Veering Storm
This grainy, tender, and contemplative film by Sofia Georgovassili approaches a potentially traumatic coming-of-age drama through a fable-like, quotidian lens.
Memories of the Eastern Front
The truth lies in the spaces between recorded history in Radu Jude and Adrian Cioflânc?’s austere and through-provoking silent documentary.
Dragon Tooth
Through colourful, chemically contaminated found footage, Rafael Castanheira Parrode evocatively excavates the trauma of the 1987 radioactivity disaster in Goiânia, Brazil.
Dirndlschuld
Super 8 footage of an idyllic holiday destination provides the serene surface for Wilbirg Brainin-Donnenberg’s probe into the darker elements of history both political and personal.
Agrilogistics
Gerard Ortín Castellví’s film about the mechanised standardisation of plant products in an industrial greenhouse is both hypnotic and unsettling; meticulous documentary and dreamlike fantasy.
Blue Has No Dimensions
Ágata de Pinho impresses both in front of and behind the camera in this visceral drama about a woman who believes she will disappear on her 28th birthday.
Kumbuka
Petna Ndaliko Katondolo’s documentary is a multifaceted exploration of complex questions around the combating of European perspectives in cinema about Africa.
Murmurs of the Jungle
Our prehistoric relationship to the forest is atmospherically invoked in this documentary about a small Indian village and the tales its inhabitants tell of the whispering trees.
Tugging Diary
Yan Wai Yin’s diaristic documentary uses the interplay of posters and graffiti on a local footbridge to explore and evoke intense social unrest in Hong Kong.
Nosferasta: First Bite
A captivating, shapeshifting excavation of the vampirism of Christopher Columbus and the colonial project filtered through the weed-fuelled mythology of artist and singer, Oba.
Songs for Dying
Korakrit Arunanondchai’s deeply moving film combines elements of mysticism, ecology, and politics to form some kind of understanding in the face of painful personal loss.
Constant
Sasha Litvintseva and Beny Wagner’s new essay film is a heady examination of the history, impacts, and social equality of standardised measurement.
The Making of Crime Scenes
Hsu Che-yu’s examination of a political assassination combines digital and physical reconstruction techniques to understand the life of a mobster, assassin, and film producer.