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

Riley Donigan Manifests Mental Anguish Through Grotesque Body Horror in His Profoundly Human Short ‘Shithead’

Riley Donigan explains how he utilised slow zooms, frenetic editing and prosthetics to express a struggling young man's accelerating descent into madness.

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Film Festival, Sponsored

Get Stuck Into These 10 Outstanding Short Films Screening at the 2025 Edition of Bolton International Film Festival

With a varied, engrossing programme sure to delight one and all playing at Bolton Film Festival next month, DN compiles our list of 10 choice, riveting shorts.

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Live Action, Premiere

Albert Bullock’s ‘Love Is Real’ Replaces Cinematic Romanticism With a Striking Dissection of the Nature of Love

Following a split, a disconnected couple set out to confront the mechanics of intimacy in Albert Bullock's compelling exploration of modern connection.

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Live Action

Georgia Small Shoulders the Crushing, Inescapable Weight of a Partner’s Silent Grief in ‘Baby’

Georgia Small details using voyeuristic, lingering camerawork to externalise the internal flood of anguish in her intimate debut short.

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Film Festival, Sponsored

9 Spellbinding Shorts Screening at Conero Film + ADV 2025

As we eagerly await the 3rd edition of Conero Film + ADV DN takes a deep dive into the official selections which demonstrate impact both on-screen & off.

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Live Action, Premiere

Joshua Elias Palmer Carves a Tender, Sombre Portrait of Filial Sacrifice in the Starkly Beautiful and Silent ‘Coda’

Joshua Elias Palmer discusses employing a constrained, anamorphic frame to mirror the emotional confines of a son’s sacrificial caregiving.

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Animation, Documentary

How Do You Animate an Orgasm? Inside Bronwen Parker-Rhodes’ Bold Descriptive Documentary ‘COME’

Rejecting digital perfection, Bronwen Parker-Rhodes details creating a work of intimate revelation and radical honesty through animation and visceral clarity.

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Live Action

The Weight of Horrifc Unspoken Trauma Crushes Small Shoulders in Lado Kvataniya’s Campaign Short ‘Haqqim Bor’

Lado Kvataniya unpacks his visceral, haunting metaphor of childhood trauma where children carry the weight of abuse as literal buildings on their backs.

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Live Action, Premiere

Desire’s Unstoppable Pulse Thrums Through Julia Ponce Díaz & Nico Blanco’s Raucous ‘Cowboy, Choker, Harness & Heart’

Julia Ponce Díaz & Nico Blanco pull back the curtain on their racy queer short, where a bathroom stall takes centre stage at a neon-drenched rave.

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Live Action, Premiere

Mateo Martinez Weaves Ancestral Ghosts and Emerald Greed Into a Hypnotic Columbian Allegory in ‘Cacique del Monte’

Mateo Martinez depicts the emerald trade through myth & violence as a thief's greed awakens a mountain's curse, binding past to present in sacred green fire.

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Live Action

A Charity Shop Transaction Spirals Into Surreal Chaos in Ken Abalos & Ash Meshkati’s Unpredictable Comedy ‘Easy Sell’

Ken Abalos and Ash Meshkati reveal how a mundane charity shop became a stage for absurd comedy, using ad-world precision to craft every cringe-worthy moment.

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Documentary

Forged Over 20 years Victoria Mapplebeck’s ‘Motherboard’ Presents the Raw, Unvarnished Reality of Solo Motherhood

Self-shot over two decades, Victoria Mapplebeck details the epic scale of her feature doc which dispels the unrealistic expectations we have about motherhood.

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