Rising to the challenge of difficult subject matter once again following last year’s haunting supernatural, high school suicide short After Sophie, Minhal Baig’s latest film Pretext, sees a young woman grapple with the emotional consequences of sexual assault as she attempts to confront the man who raped her.

The short takes its title from the “pretext calls” victims make under the supervision of law enforcement officers, in an effort to draw incriminating evidence from a suspect. It’s a film whose power resides in its avoidance of a simplistic ‘justice is served’ resolution, instead focussing on the worryingly much more realistic lack of closure and consequential emotional fallout experienced by the vast majority of sexual assault survivors.

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