myDylarama

Clermont-Ferrand International Short Film Festival 2026

carrie — 2026-02-01T10:22:18Z

Europe's largest (and the world's second largest) film festival back, nestled in the heart of France's wild, volcanic region of the Massif Central. Its international competition, made up of 12 programmes of shorts, is one of the richest platforms for storytelling from around the world. The accessibility and relatively low cost of short filmmaking allow for breadth of voices that can't be matched by feature film festivals. The more experimental films are given a competition all to themselves - the Lab. On top of which are special programmes, thematic screenings, exhibitions... so much to fill the hefty catalogue the 200,000 festival attendees are lugging and anottating day in day out.

This year's geographical focus is South East Asia. Festival regular, Filipino director Don Josephus Raphael Eblahan is back. Festival moderator and writer Elise Loiseau has written this in-depth piece on his work - and this edition's masterclass will be with Vietnamese-French director Tran Anh Hung (The Taste of Things, The Smell of the Green Papaya).

There is so much going on, there's hardy any point trying to capture the highlights. But a few of the perks that sets Clermont apart include: a fairly exhaustive programme squarely aimed at children (from 4!), filmmaking and film craft workshops (free!), side exhibitions (all around the town!), and a massive film market (pitch your feature!). Every year, the festival team arranges for the Palestinian film delegation to come and present the consistently and astoundingly strong films made and produced by Palestinian filmmakers in the preceding 12 months.

We'll be back with a few choice Q&As... Watch this space.

Arab picks from LFF 2025

Abla Kandalaft, Alma — 2025-10-20T10:59:06Z

Aside from our recently reviewed Palestine 36, the BFI London Film Festival marked the festival run tailend for a number of films from the Arab world. Highlights include Erige Sehiri's Promised Sky, a rare, necessary, and beautifully dramatised account of migrant women from the Ivory Coast living in Tunisia, having made their way there for a variety of reasons (study, refuge...). Surprisingly few films have been made about intra-continental migration, despite this making up the vast majority of international migration patterns.

It doesn't make the women's plight any less harrowing. Erige Sehiri, who has a knack for filming female friendships, bonds and interactions with intimacy and heart (see Under the Fig Trees), tells the stories of Preacher Marie, young mother Naney and student Jolie who moved from their homeland in search of a better life. They end up looking after young Kenza, a 4 year-old girl washed ashore after losing her family in a perilous sea journey - a character heartbreakingly based on a real girl Erige met who did perish at sea with her mother. Sehiri's nuanced, moving depiction of motherhood - Naney missing her daughter and unable to be with her, Marie taking Kenza under her wing yet aware that the girl isn't hers - serves as a prism through which the hardship of the women's displacement is told. Yet, there are great moments of humour and joy showing the resilience of these women.

An utterly original, surreal and quite gripping pick is Khartoum, the result of five directors' efforts to piece together a heartfelt tribute to the Sudanese capital told throught the lives of five of its inhabitants. What started out as a UK backed small-scale project to create 5 short poems about Khartoum was entirely upended when the directors - one Brit and four Sudanese + the Khartoum residents they were filming were forced to flee following the outbreak of the conflict between the Sudanese Armed Forces and the Rapid Support Forces in 2023. They used what production money they had left to flee to Kenya and, once there, all eventually rekindled to put together a different film. In the absence of footage and filming locations, they end up drawing on a variety of other funding bodies and opportunities to use greenscreen and animation to re-create scenes of everyday life in Khartoum. It's done in a similar vein to The Act of Killing and although some of the scenes they "perform" are heartbreaking, the end film is full of humour, joy, and colour. While director Rawya Al Haj is keen to stress the importance of raising political awareness about the conflict in Sudan and counter media misinformation - very much a proxy war as opposed to a civil war - Khartoum is a truly uplifting, rousing love letter to the both the city and its people.

Zain Duraie's Sink is a (criminally) rare film from the Arab world that tackles complex family dynamics and mental health. Duraie handles the subject with so much nuance, maturity and compassion that it came as a surprise to find out this was her first feature. Her first foray into filmmaking was in fact as Annemarie Jacir's assistant and there's something of that same treatment of intergenerational banter, of the intimacy of everyday interactions. The film tells the story of a mum (Clara Khoury, also starring in The Voice of Hind Rajab) dealing with the deterioriation of her son's mental health and the eventual fallout on her personal and professional lives and the rest of the family. Unsurprisingly, Duraie found it near impossible to garner interest on the part of the usual line up of European funders and co-productions given the subject matter. Eventually, other funding partners stepped in and the film saw the light of the day after five years in the making.

The Fifth Annual Jerusalem Arab Film Festival (JAFF)

Mydylarama team — 2025-07-23T14:27:52Z

The Jerusalem Arab Film Festival has just celebrated its fifth edition. Set up in 2020, the festival is a rare chance to celebrate Arab storytelling in increasingly restricted cultural spaces under occupation and helps foster a sense of connection for Palestinians living in the city who are for the most part physically cut off from the rest of historic Palestine and the wider Arab world. The week-long JAFF presented 31 films, including fiction features, docs, and shorts, as well as panels and talks at Al Hakawati Theater in East Jerusalem.

Founder and director Nevin Shaheen is keen to stress the importance of this space for the city's cultural life and Palestinian identity: “We dedicate a significant part of the festival's program to social and political cinema, with a spotlight on the suffering of the people of Gaza, and we present films that reflect the stories of prisoners and the weight of memory under occupation. Cinema here becomes a space of emotional, political, and cultural resistance.” (Festival catalogue)

Internationally, Palestinian cinema stands out: despite the impossible situation on the ground, the incredible precariouness which defines all aspects of the lives of the quasi-totality of Palestinians, filmmaking is surprisingly prolific. Bethlehem-based Film Lab Palestine presents a full programme of new shorts every year, most notably showcased at the Clermont-Ferrand International Short Film Festival, and without fail, the cinematography is exquisite, the stories are strong and rousing, the performances nuanced and captivating. Yet, Jerusalem has so far remained on the margins of this resilient sector. Festival consultant and Tripoli Film Festival founder Elias Khlat describes Jerusalem as "largely absent from the cinematic panorama”. “Had it not been for this film festival, initiated by Nevin Shaheen, it would have been entirely missing from the map.”

(EU Partners)

The festival opened on 9 July with Passing Dreams by prominent Palestinian filmmaker Rashid Masharawi (Feature Jury Prize), a family journey through Palestine on the hunt for a homing pigeon. Other entries include We Are Inside, by Farah Kassem (Shireen Abu Akleh Jury Prize); Diaries from Lebanon, by Myriam al-Hajj; The Vanishing, by Karim Moussaoui; Aicha, by Mahdi M. Al Barsaoui (Best Feature Film); The Brink of Dreams, by Ayman al-Amir (Best Doc); The Village Next to Paradise, by Mo Harawe; Madaniya, by Mohamed Subahi (Special Mention), A Passing Day, by Rasha Shahin (Best Short).

The festival was followed by a 2-day programme rescreening festival entries in Bethlehem in collaboration with Wonder Cabinet.

Of The People, For the People: Militant Palestinian Cinema (1968-1982)

Asma Ibrahim — 2024-05-13T18:31:19Z

The screening programme Of The People, For the People: Militant Palestinian Cinema (1968-1982) was held as part of Doc City Festival. It was curated by filmmaker Saeed Taji Farouky.

Before attending Of The People, For the People, my main exposure to early Palestinian cinema was via R21 AKA Restoring Solidarity which I saw at the Institute of Contemporary Arts some months ago. This was a very different experience. After a strong opening statement by Saeed Taji Farouky, we were guided through his curated selection of five films made in the 1970s:

Scenes from the Occupation of Gaza (Mustafa Abu Ali, 1973)
The Visit (Qais Al-Zubaidi, 1970)
Palestinian Women (Jocelyne Saab, 1973)
Our Small Houses (Kassem Hawal, 1974)
They Do Not Exist (Mustafa Abu Ali, 1974)

The first film, Scenes from the Occupation of Gaza, was familiar to my eyes. Made by Mustafa Abu Ali, one of the founders of the Palestine Film Unit, it is a fantastic example of how a completely different tale can be told with the same content. Mustafa Abu Ali repurposed footage meant for a French documentary on Palestine, instead weaving a tale about Palestinian resilience in the face of occupation. It is a timely film, confronting the audience with an occupied Gaza of decades past. We hear about Khan Younis and Rafah , names that are now as familiar as our local neighbourhoods. The film repeatedly uses the word ‘fedayeen', which means resistance fighter in Arabic. Strangely enough, I find myself thinking of Dune Part Two - which I had watched two days prior. Frank Herbert's heavy lifting from Arabic included fedayeen (in Dune ‘fedaykin') to refer to the Fremen, who used similar guerilla tactics against their enemies - the Harkonnens.

Scenes from the Occupation of Gaza is followed by The Visit by Qais Al-Zubaidi, an experimental nine-minute short film. The Visit is a collage-style film featuring poetry from prominent Palestinian poets like Mahmoud Darweish, Samih al-Qasim and Tawfiq Ziad. In the darkness of a cinema, the eerie scenes and poetry readings are particularly impressive.

One of my favourite films from the selection was Palestinian Women (Jocelyne Saab, 1973). Initially commissioned by Antenne 2, a French TV channel, it was then stuck in the editing process and never aired. The opening scene is set in a kindergarten classroom, we are told that the women accompanying the children aren't ordinary women but guerrilla fighters. Soon we are watching interviews with female Palestinian students in Beirut. I was particularly struck by one interviewee who talked about female emancipation as being part of their struggle for liberation. Her goal was not to return to what was but to create a better future for her people in every way possible. I also suspected the following line may be why the film was shelved: “It is not just Israel who is at war with us, but also the United States and France, and all the other countries… The coward ones fight with their aviation. The brave ones fight, setting foot to free their land.” This statement is articulated by a fierce woman seated on the ground, a gun at her side.

The fourth film, Our Small Houses is less well-known but an interesting work of cinema. It is a PFLP creation by Iraqi director Kassem Hewel. It is a black-and-white montage film that ends with dramatic extended first person POV shots of a rifle, these emphasise the notion of the camera as a weapon, but also invite the viewer to join the movement and ‘shoot'.

We finish with They Do Not Exist, another Mustafa Abu Ali short film. The story of the film itself is remarkable. Salvaged from a wrecked Beirut in 1982, it was restored, smuggled in and finally screened in Jerusalem, Palestine in 2003. Seeing his film for the first time in around twenty years, Mustafa Abu Ali said “We used to say ‘art for the struggle', but now it's ‘struggle for the art'.” The title is a reference to Golda Meir's remark that Palestinians do not exist. It is a powerful film that merits a rewatch. I was particularly touched by the sincerity of Aida, a ten year-old girl in the Nabatieh refugee camp, who narrates a letter she writes to revolutionary fighters. She laments that the best gift she can offer is a towel, but expresses her admiration for the fighters and praises their courage.

The Q&A that follows features Professor Lina Khatib from the SOAS Middle East Institute, and Dr Nadia Yaqub from the University of North Carolina. One of the most memorable points was on the creation and destruction of archives. While the Israeli occupation has regularly engaged in cultural and historical erasure, through the destruction of institutions, libraries and other formal archives, Dr Nadia Yaqub emphasised that we should not only frame this situation in such a way that Palestinians are passive victims. Instead, it is important to remember that Palestinians actively respond to these acts of erasure by reconstructing archives and making entirely new ones. After all, the point behind historical and cultural erasure is for the Israeli regime to destroy any sense of peoplehood amongst the indigenous Palestinians. To be truly acknowledged as a people would be to acknowledge their claim to the land.

The selected films are diverse in style, content and direction but all portray Palestinians as active revolutionaries resisting imperialism, rather than helpless victims. These films mark a determination by Palestinians to control their own image and narrative. Screened across film festivals across the globe, they indicate not just the breadth of cinema on Palestine, but also how international the Palestinian cause truly is. Of The People, For the People is a fitting tribute to Palestinian filmmaking of the past and a strong reminder that while the camera can be a ‘weapon for imperialism', it is also a weapon for resistance.

EFN double award winner Plum Stupple-Harris talks to Steve Topple

Steve Topple — 2023-11-28T10:04:19Z

Filmmaker Plum Stupple-Harris' short, "ManMade," is EFN Short Film Festival's 2023 double-award winner! For the first time in EFN's history, a film won both Critics' Choice and Audience Favourite awards.

Journalist Steve Topple speaks to Plum about his filmmaking journey.

ManMade features notable actors Cavan Clerkin (Inbetweeners), Harry Gilby (The Last Kingdom), and Oli Huntingdon (Happy Valley).
You can follow Plum's work here.

Steve Topple is a journalist, broadcaster, and music publicist. He was worked as a political journalist for the Independent, the Canary, New Internationalist, the Morning Star, Red Pepper, and openDemocracy. He has appeared on Al Jazeera, Al Mayadeen TV, and the BBC.

He is also a trained musician, singer, and actor. Steve has used these skills to turn his hand to arts journalism - being a music reviewer and broadcaster for Reggaeville and Pauzeradio. He hosts film screenings for Mydylarama, and is a contributor to the Radical Art Review. Steve also works a publicist for a host of Reggae and Dancehall artists and producers.

You can find him across socials via @MrTopple

EFN Short Film Festival is an organisation that showcases, promotes and educates emerging filmmakers.

You can follow @EFNFilmFest

Painted Skies - A Celebration Of Fake Backgrounds

Judy Harris — 2023-11-13T14:33:34Z

As a child, Bruno Savill de Jong was captivated by the charming fakery of films such as The Wizard of Oz, Batman and Singin' in the Rain. Now, a student at the National Film and Television School, he is curating the Painted Skies film season at the Cinema Museum in London. Judy Harris spoke with him about film's relationship to artifice, Mario Bava and the inventiveness of old school special effects.

You describe Painted Skies as a season celebrating ‘fake' backgrounds – what interests you about film's relationship to artifice and fakery?

Today, almost all cinematic images are fake. Even directors like David Fincher, who you don't associate with vfx-heavy films, use tons of digital touch-ups and CGI wizardry, which I recognise is its own artistry. The difference in the films I'm screening is that the artifice is deliberate and pushed to the forefront. Of course, some people argue that cinema is about the truth and don't want it to engage in this kind of fakery. Now, I love neo-realism as much as the next person, but it's frustrating when people think that social dramas and neo-realism are necessarily the most important kind of films to make. What I love about film is how versatile it is - film can be anything, we shouldn't think of live action or realism as the only thing that film can do.

When films are older e.g. The Wizard of Oz, this kind of artifice is more readily accepted, especially if it's placed in a childlike, fantasy world. Even The Cabinet of Dr Caligari is set in a kind of fairy tale storybook world and that allows for more explicit non-truthfulness in its style. For me, seeing the strings in these films is charming. I like to see how a film is made. I love the creativity and inventiveness on display in the work of filmmakers such as Zeman and Méliès. It was so laborious to make films back then, yet they still found a way to be so playful with it.

What is the difference between a matte painting and a painted background?

A painted backdrop is literally just a background that is painted and filmed. A matte painting is a process of combining a painted image with a live-action one, the 'matte' being the flat image which is composited with the other elements.

Are matte paintings used around the world?

There are some amazing resources out there that have taught me a lot about the history of matte paintings, but most of what I found focuses on the U.S. and Britain. However, there are Japanese films that use matte paintings, such as Kwaidan or Female Prisoner #701, which have other-worldly painted skies. I also love the films of Obayashi, and his film House is very interesting in this sense because Obayashi was a pioneer of blue screen and green screen technology, as well as matte paintings and painted backdrops. There's a great scene where a woman's head is moving around the screen cut off from her body. His later films are experimental green screen films. There's one where the actors are in front of a village, but you get the sense it may fall down any moment. There are certainly many other examples from around the world that I don't know about yet.

What are some of your favourite films with matte paintings?

I'll give just two of my favourites:

Black Narcissus – this film is shot entirely inside a studio and has amazing landscapes and sunsets. The matte paintings are by Walter Percy Day who worked with Powell and Pressburger. There's an amazing scene with a view of a bell tower and a dramatic cliff face which retains its dramatic tension, even though you can tell that half the image is live action and half is painted. But for me the heightened reality of the aesthetic only adds to the themes of the film.

Danger: Diabolik – this is an Italian comic book film which is like an insane episode of the 1966 Batman series, but more hippyish. It's a spectacular world with lots of matte paintings. I don't even know if it's a good film, but it's an experience! The director, Mario Bava, actually began his career as a matte painter in fantasy films and did his own matte work in the films he directed.

I think matte paintings are paradoxical – they are both expansive and constrained. They can create a very closed kind of space, yet the sky is the limit when it comes to your imagination.

What, if anything, has been lost in the transition to digital effects?

The issue for me isn't the use of digital technology per se but the way it's used, which is usually as a quick fix. What I think is being lost is a sense of experimentation and playfulness, along with the feeling of looking at something tangible. Matte paintings are fake, but to me they feel more authentic and crafted than CGI and green screens, even though those techniques are crafted things too.

For example, I'm a fan of John Carpenter's The Thing because I love bodily transformations. I really enjoy the metamorphosis of the creature and all the goopiness. Of course, you can do transformations so well with CGI now, but the old analogue techniques are often so much more appealing and inventive. Even the shrivelling up of the title at the start of The Thing – they did that by putting the title behind a fish tank, wrapped up in a garbage bag which was then lit on fire.

However, the film Speed Racer (above) is an example of how CGI could be used in a more interesting way. It has impressionistic backgrounds and while it still has a very digital look it's strange and has its own style. So digital effects could be used in interesting ways, but so often they're not.

What is the status of matte painting today?

While matte painting isn't thriving, I think it is being maintained in certain ways. There are a few big-name filmmakers who have an interest in studio filmmaking and old school effects, as we can see with films like Barbie, Asteroid City and Poor Thing. And matte painter Leigh Took still has a company making models for Game of Thrones. Unfortunately, however, the technical knowledge of all these practices is dwindling away.

Why did you choose these films to be part of the season?

I had a long, long list of films so it took a while to select these four. Ultimately, I wanted to select films that would show a range of different ways to use matte paintings and painted backdrops.

Dick Tracy (Warren Beatty,1990) is the most mainstream film in the season and is a great looking movie. It's set in a comic book world and some legendary matte painters worked on it including Harrison Ellenshaw, Michelle Moen, Paul Lasaine, Michael Lloyd and David Mattingly

Perceval le Gallois (Éric Rohmer, 1978) is an experimental film by Rohmer, whose other films are all much more naturalistic. It's totally studio bound, like a Western where you can see the flimsiness of the sets – it's really cranked up to be obviously artificial. It's very flat, like a medieval manuscript and this mirrors the experience of the hero who is trapped in a closed world, going in circles.

The Fabulous Baron Munchausen (Karel Zeman,1962) is, I think, an extraordinary film. It's very playful with a wood carving style (it's very Czech!) and Zeman is using all the possibilities he can, it feels like he's revelling in his creativity.

You The Living (Roy Andersson, 2007) is extraordinary in a completely different way. Anderson's films are all made inside, they're totally insular and statically shot and this film is reminiscent of Edward Hopper's paintings in its framing, though it's a comedy. There's a great documentary on the making of this film called Tomorrow is Another Day which I highly recommend and hope to screen one day.

Painted Skies – A season of film celebrating fake backgrounds is on at the Cinema Museum 19th Nov – 8th Dec. Tickets available here:
https://brunosavilldejong.wixsite.com/paintedskies/screenings

Masterfully inspired by Afro-futurism: Amartei Amar on TsutsuƐ - ClermontFF2023

Brasserie du Court team, Elise Loiseau — 2023-02-05T14:41:11Z

Set in a small Ghanaian town at the edge of a large landfill site that spills into the ocean, the sons of a fisherman, Sowah and Okai, struggle to cope with loss of their eldest brother who drowned during a fishing expedition. Haunted by his demise, Okai believes their brother is still out there…

Speaking at the Clermont-Ferrand International Short Film Festival, filmmaker Amartei Amar explained his choice to draw on the aesthetics of such movements as Afro-futurism. He does so masterfully. This short represents some of the most beautiful facets of the genre with its intermeshing of innocent children's play, socio-political reality and supernatural elements grounded in millennia of myths and traditions. A stunning and ingenious piece of work.

What was the starting point of TsutsuƐ?

TsutsuƐ was born through three spiritually interwoven true stories. The first was from an experience our Producer had when a neighbourhood boy discovered a dead body in an open sewer. As he went to tell others, a storm broke and washed the body away. By the time he managed to get everyone to the spot, it wasn't there. No one believed him and was he labelled crazy. It wasn't until three days later, that the body was discovered in the ocean near where the sewer connects with the sea that the boy was believed. The second story comes from within my own family. Some years ago we lost the eldest brother of my father. He was survived by ten children, all grown except for the last born who also happens to be the only boy. His father passed and was even buried in the UK whilst he was still in boarding school here in Ghana. Because my cousin never got to see his father buried, he couldn't emotionally comprehend the loss when he was told. This manifested in him believing on numerous occasions that he saw his father in the streets and in the faces of other men. The spiritual connection with his late father and the mental toll it took on him during his formative years is something that has stuck with me since. The third true story came from a documentary we were doing on the fishing industry in Ghana. How 70% of what the fisherman take out of the ocean with their nets is just trash. Because of this, they must go deeper out into the ocean and into harsher, sometimes life-endangering, fishing conditions. It is a fearsome task for them, because in Ghanaian culture to drown at sea is to have a spirit condemned to wandering the earth without knowing where is home.

The scenes that take place in the dump are particularly striking visually. What gave you the idea of filming there?

Shooting there was paramount to me as I wanted to create a dramatic dichotomy between the power of the artificial reality versus the natural one, but also show how their global rivalry has an effect on the human condition and the intimate realities within it. The landfill and the ocean to me are brothers rather than enemies and it was important to create a spiritual correlation between the two showing how both are places of play and danger; peace and trauma.

Can you tell us a bit more about Elisha Kirtson-Acquah and Idrissu Tontie Jr., who play Okai and Sowa? Their performances are really powerful.

This was Elisha's first time acting and he's actually from the town we shot in so we're all very proud of him. He just has this energy about him. A fearlessness in his physicality, yet possessing a sort of quiet wisdom in how he sees the world. For me it was important that we were able to capture this side of him. I'm still in awe of him as he was just eight years old at the time of filming, but still continues to grow in the best of ways. With Tontie, I've worked with him before on the short film Vagabonds. It was also his first time acting as he was ten years old then and I could say the same about him as Elisha. He has a talent that I can't wait for the world to see. We are going to do a feature film with him as the lead so exciting times ahead. Both bring amazing amounts of dedication and intensity to their work and I can't wait to work with them again.

How did you shoot the scene that takes place at night, on the shore? How challenging was it, technically?

The logistics of this shoot were possibly the hardest I've ever faced. But we all knew this going in. The one thing I love about independent film, and even more specifically short independent film, is that in order to achieve a look or even just one shot, we have to go to these places and do it in the reality of the moment. With every environment, we have to, as filmmakers, endure what the characters go through. We are on the field, in the real spaces, so we have to find a way, through simple or complex human ingenuity. Honestly, everything you see, we just did in the simplest way you could think of, paying attention more to safety for cast and crew, while trying to achieve it.

What's your favourite short film?

My favourite short film is hard to say because there are so many that have meant so much to me. A one that still is a little treasure for me to watch every now and again is Nefta Football Club by Yves Piat.

What does the Festival mean to you?

This will be my first time for, Clermont-Ferrand, but its reputation to me as a filmmaker is that it is a champion of short film works by auteurs with unique voices both emerging and established. That, at its core, harbors a deep love for the craft of short film and the incredible role it plays in both the creation and evolution of a filmmaker.

Rehearsals, consent & reactions with EXPOSED dir. Anna Fredrikke Bjerke, EFN Critics' Choice Award

Abla Kandalaft — 2022-10-17T19:59:11Z

A young drama student must reconcile the potential pros and cons of a defining lead performance act.

The idea of articulating issues around coercion, consent and nudity through a theatre rehearsal creates an engaging and tightly woven short, which ends with a satisfying and well pitched crescendo. EXPOSED won the Critics' Choice Award at Emerging Filmmakers Night 2022.

EXPOSED was also a Vimeo Staff Pick and you can watch the full film HERE!

Find out more about Anna's work here.

Comedy, Horror and EFN's Audience Favourite Award win with Bleep's Ben S. Hyland

Abla Kandalaft — 2022-10-15T10:08:43Z

A couple's relationship is pushed to the brink as they investigate a strange noise that's woken them in the night.

Ben S. Hyland's short is a pitch-perfect mix of horror and laughs, staring comedy duo (and real-life couple) Rebecca Shorrocks and Paul F. Taylor. Bleep won the Audience Favourite Award at the Emerging Filmmakers Night Festival 2022. We caught up with Ben to chat about his first steps into filmmaking, his comedic proclivities and his all-time classic films.

You can follow Ben's work on Twitter @Ben_S_Hyland and EFN's updates on their website.

Snapshots from Leeds International Film Festival 2021

Abla Kandalaft, Alma, Tom L.J. — 2021-11-21T20:57:27Z

Every year, the Leeds International Film Festival offers a carefully curated, diverse and exhaustive programme of feature films, retrospectives, shorts, music videos and more. Three members of the team were there. One of us was also part of the Jury for British and Yorkshire shorts! Here are some highlights away from the main feature competition programme.

Alien on Stage by Lucy Harvey and Danielle Kummer

A very amateur dramatics group of Dorset Bus Drivers spent a year creating a serious stage adaptation of the sci-fi, horror film, Alien. With wobbly sets, awkward acting and special effects requiring more luck than judgement.

The directors knew they had gold on their hands in the form of this hugely entertaining production. We as the viewers - and presumably as the audience of the actual live show - are never quite sure whether or not the cast and crew are in on the joke, which makes for some moments of awkward, guilt-ridden viewing, which mostly gives way to sheer enthusiasm and genuine big laughs. Kudos to the crew who in all earnestness put so much care and attention in recreating scenes from the film.

Music Video Awards

Here are our top 3 from the Leeds selection for you to enjoy!

Mary Ocher - For All We Know, directed by Yann Les Jours

Hak Baker - Irrelevant Elephant, directed by Jon E Price

Blake Mills - Money Is the One True God, directed by Lachlan Turczan

Blake Mills | Money Is The One True God from Lachlan Turczan on Vimeo.

Shorts and Animation

Aside from our delight at rewatching Joanna Quinn's Affairs of the Art, a Clermont favourite, our collective special mentions go to the mesmerising What Resonates in Silence directed by Marine Blin, the calming and soothing Pearl Diver by Norwegian film student Margrethe Danielsen, the funny, touching and well paced dark comedy An Irish Goodbye by Tom Berkeley and Ross White, short doc Hanging On by Alfie Barker, a glimpse at the human cost of gentrification and eviction, a creative, imaginative and personal take on much explored (but still relevant) issues in documentary.

We also liked Dan Thorburn's sombre, arresting and beautifully acted Salt Water Town and documentary maker Sema Basharan's The Branches are Hope; The Roots are Memory, an uplifting, poetic and very concrete look at the abstract concepts of peace and faith in the city of Bradford, also the well-deserved winner of the Yorkshire shorts competition. You can find Q&As with the latter two directors here and here.

We didn't have time to watch or cover everything, there were so many more gems to catch. Feel free to contact us if you have any questions you'd like to put to the Leeds team or the directors.