Author

About the Author /

Sarah is a true multi-hyphenate within the film industry. Alongside her role as Associate Editor & Head of Outreach for Directors Notes, her extensive festival experience ranges from MC and juror duties to previously serving as Deputy Director of Brighton Rocks, where she helped steer its growth into a BIFA-qualifying event. Sarah also produces for Brighton film collective The Imaginary Project and contributes as a freelance writer for publications including 1.4 and Shots Magazine.

Live Action

Li Anne Liew’s Gentle Ghost Drifts Through Strangers’ Secret Selves in ‘glide (all the people i’ll never be)’

In Li Anne Liew's tender ghost story reverie, a young woman wanders Los Angeles unseen as she mourns the life she's leaving and the ones she'll never live.

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Live Action, Premiere

Kelly Sarri Turns a Punishing Summer Into Intimate, Generational Warfare in Her Scorching Climate Short ‘Heat Me’

Kelly Sarri grounds global climate anxieties within the invisible domestic toll borne by three generations of women inside a sweltering Greek apartment.

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Documentary, Premiere

Grace Anna Cardona’s ‘Born To Hustle’ Refuses to Slow Down, Explain Itself or Wait for Audiences to Catch Up

Grace Anna Cardona's portrait of artist Emma Addams, Heart of Bone's macabre jeweller and accommodator of no one, gives the rest of us permission to let rip.

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Art & Fashion

Rachel McDonald Harnesses the Power of Movement and Radical Tenderness in Wordless Dance Short ‘Ternura’

Rachel McDonald orchestrates a transfeminist manifesto from Mexico City into a striking wordless dance short rooted in radical vulnerability and resistance.

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Live Action, Premiere

Elias Suhail Follows a Young Mother to the Excruciating Edge of an Impossible Decision in ‘Beneath a Mother’s Feet’

Through near-wordless accumulation and visions of djinn and dread, Elias Suhail honours the gravity of a departure his film refuses to make easy.

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Animation, Live Action, Premiere

Live-Action Grime Meets Hand-Drawn Whimsy in Cameron Macgowan’s Silent Eco-Fable of Scavengers and Sprouts ‘Seed’

Shot with friends in Kananaskis wilderness dressed in scavenged junk, Cameron Macgowan's charming wordless short grew through years of unhurried collaboration.

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Live Action

Prey Turns Predator as Jacob Hopewell Aims the Male Gaze Back on Itself in Visceral Horror Short ‘MEAT’

Born from Abi Zakarian's blistering stage monologue, Jacob Hopewell turns the male gaze inside out, resulting in a raw and genuinely terrifying confrontation.

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Live Action, Premiere

Sisterhood Turns Up Where a Husband Never Will in Kitty Percy’s Bittersweet Roadside Comedy Drama ‘For Better’

Kitty Percy's short roots for solidarity over romance as a lonely woman on a roadside in a wedding dress realises she's been waiting for the wrong thing.

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Live Action

Grief Wears the Face of a Stranger Who Arrives With the Storm in Kalani Gacon’s Himalayan Drama ‘Family Man’

Kalani Gacon conjures a missing father from the rain in his near-wordless Himalayan myth where image, weather and a single song carry the unsayable.

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Live Action

Marissa Goldman Mines the Voyeurism and Loneliness of Online Life for Off-Kilter Comedy Short ‘Max Distance’

Marissa Goldman crafts a mirror-laced world where digital loneliness turns into a surreal, tender, and darkly funny study of human obsession.

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Live Action, Premiere

Dangerous Obsession Hides Beneath the Intimacy of a Shave in Luigi Sibona’s Psychosexual Thriller ‘In Your Hands’

Shaving scenes choreographed to flirt with murder anchor Luigi Sibona's psychosexual thriller about desire projected onto an indifferent stranger.

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Film Festival

Tender, Hopeful and Human: 10 Must-Watch Shorts from Tribeca 2026

As Tribeca wraps up its 25th edition of the well respected film festival, DN picks out 10 shorts—tender and affecting tales of belonging, identity and home.

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