Shorts

“16 District, 16 Floors, 16 People”, is a short film featuring a district in Yerevan, Armenia, where the legacy of the Soviet Union still occupies the minds and daily lives of the residents living in these huge unfinished monolithic structures built to write the letters CCCP. The film highlights the communities everyday issues and concerns, linking the past and present with all its changes and difficulties of the people once living in a superpower that’s become a decaying empire. WATCH (…)

An elderly man insists on granting his wife’s wish of taking their car through a drive-thru car wash. Could you explain the title? The title Skewwhiff meant a couple of things to me. On one level, Bill’s shirt collar becomes “skewwhiff” or askew at one point and Rae adjusts it for him. This felt like a worthy moment to use as a title as we get the sense Rae has spent her life caring for Bill, which is bittersweet as the roles are beginning to reverse. More broadly, the couple’s world of (…)

During a trip to the Philippines, middle-aged, Norwegian Lars has met Abigail - the Filipina he wants to share his life with, but does she share his plans? I’m so pleased to finally be able to share this interview that we carried out at the Clermont-Ferrand International Film Festival 2020. The Manila Lover, which premiered at Semaine de la Critique, was one of my favourite shorts, a nuanced and sweet film with some excellent character development. The character of Abigail is sadly still (…)

Mydylarama is looking forward to teaming up with the EFN team. Keep your eyes open... With the world’s film festival and screening events on an indefinite hiatus, the Emerging Filmmakers Night programming team, filmmaker Erifili Missiou, comic Mike Sheer and filmmaker Ben Plumb, launched their own live-stream curated screening event on the 6th of April, the first of its kind, and attracted an audience of over 1,000 people. Undaunted by the challenge of Covid-19, they decided to continue (…)

What better time to unearth this early short by Canadian director Denis Villeneuve? In the midst of the supermarket hording that is quickly characterising these end times, Netflix is showing Galder Gaztelu-Urrutia’s The Platform, whose obscene and opulent gorging sequences are starkly reminiscent of Villeneuve’s Next Floor, which sees privileged diners nauseatingly stuffing their faces with exquisitely prepared meats. Much like The Platform, it is a dark and satirical, purposely over the (…)

Spending his last night as a civilian in his dream-like local tennis club, Michael, a young British soldier confronts a glimpse of the near future waiting for him on the other side of the night. Video interview to come... An Arabian Night is a dreamy huit-clos with an out-of-time quality reminiscent of Jim Jarmusch’s Night On Earth. Through the tale of this improbable encounter, much like in the Arabian Nights, the writer seeks to explore the reality of two worlds colliding, and the (…)

Halima, a Sudanese woman living in Egypt, works as a henna painter. On a regular working day, she goes to one of Giza’s local areas to prepare a bride for her wedding. Her seven-year-old daughter Ward accompanies her and starts to wander around and discover the place. A well-structured narrative short and an impressive debut from Egyptian director Mostafa Morad, whose camera work and carefully selected intimate moments drop us straight into the chaos of the pre-wedding rituals and allow us (…)

Four-O-Five, the film, is about an un-named man in an un-named town, who has lost everything, including the love of an un-named girl because of an un-named sin committed by him at some point. Here’s our video interview with the director and actor Dhaananjay Talwade. There is a beautifully poetic quality to your film, and also a sense of loss and regret. What do you hope the audience will get out of it? Thanks for the compliment, I want the audience to know what freedom really is; (…)

Ziad, a Palestinian day labourer, is denied entry into Israel for work that day. Not wanting to return home empty handed after promising his daughter meat for dinner, he needs to get creative. Trump’s latest meddling in the region has effectively left many if not most Palestinians feeling hopeless. The title of this short is a nod to the Oslo Accords that ended up dispossessing them of more of their land and subduing much of their fight for rights and freedom. The recent US "deal" further (…)

Karachi, Pakistan. Iqbal, a migrant sex worker, cannot come to terms with his illness. He convinces his uncle to take a day trip to the beach, desperate for respite. The Arabian sea beckons. An original film about an oft-ignored demographic. Hamza handles the subject matter with sensitivity and respect, painting a complex, human portrait of a character that is too often faceless. Can you explain the title? What is the symbol or role of the dog? In the late of night, the streets of (…)