Directors Notes // The Home of Independent Filmmaking

“Brave Provocative Stories” Holly Fraser on WePresent’s Approach to Commissioning Fearless Director-Led Short Films

WeTransfer's arts platform WePresent commissions provocative director-led shorts, backing filmmakers with the creative freedom, funding and reach to make them.

Live Action, Premiere

David Liu Builds a Lifetime of History Between Lovers in His Temporally Fluid Short ‘A Song for Gracie’

Past and present blur at a Mojave gas station as David Liu's elegiac short asks what it means to carry every version of yourself into an uncertain future.

Live Action, Premiere

A Mother and Two Daughters Circle Their Shared History in Chanelle Eidenbenz’s Subtly Searing Short ‘Resort’

Mosaic editing and a rich sonic world coalesce in Chanelle Eidenbenz's auto-fictional short where a fractured family orbits each other without quite landing.

Live Action

Profound Solitude Slowly Collapses Around a Sheltered Farmer in Billy Chester’s Stark Swedish Island Short ‘Bonde’

Billy Chester traded a composed score for ambient texture and dialogue for half-murmurs in his enthralling rendering of a secluded farmer's isolation.

Live Action

Ross O’Donnellan’s Tender Directorial Debut ‘Bedcrumbs’ Sits Inside the Quiet Erosion of a Failing Relationship

Shot on 16mm in sweaty, dreamlike hues, Ross O'Donnellan's queer chamber piece watches non-monogamy fail as a bandage stretched over a broken bone.

Film Festival, Live Action

Cannes Double-Hitter Vida Skerk Finds Solidarity in the Industrial Sublime in Haunting ‘Left Behind, Still Standing’

Vida Skerk's second consecutive La Cinef Cannes selected short binds a closing British steelworks and the immigrant overseeing it into one haunted reckoning.

Live Action, Premiere

Ghosts of Empire Bleed Through a Hustler’s Frantic South London Odyssey in Keifer Nyron Taylor’s ‘The Tobacconist’

Keifer Nyron Taylor unpacks how years of photographing Brixton laid the foundation for his 16mm depiction of a vibrant community threatened by gentrification.

Animation, Film Festival

Fanny Capu Unburdens the Next Generation From the Suffocating Weight of Legacy in Stop-Motion Cannes Short ‘Pickled’

Fanny Capu on engineering a dancing puppet for her grad NFTS Cannes premiering short that asks what each generation is owed and what heritage it can discard.

Live Action, Premiere

Hector Bell Unmasks the Performatively So Called Enlightened Modern Man in His Body-Horror Short ‘Skin Deep’

Hector Bell discusses crafting a character whose private vice literally erupts across his girlfriend's skin, every visit blooming as her fresh personal hell.