Live Action Category

Live Action

Amrou Al-Kadhi’s ‘Original Sin’ Stages a Tragic Mother-Son Bloodbath as Hollywood Melodrama in Short Film Form

A Muslim mother and her drag queen son go to war for cinematic immortality in Amrou Al-Kadhi's WePresent commissioned chamber piece.

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Live Action, Premiere

To Immortalize Their Love a Couple Turn to a Struggling Artist With Dark Intentions in Femke Huurdeman’s ‘Carve’

Inspired by a cute keepsake for couples, director Femke Huurdemen's writing debut is the twisted tale of an artist taking her work a little too seriously.

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Live Action

Navigating the Seas of Film Form with Mark Jenkin

Neil Fox catches up with Mark Jenkin to explore how his shorts have become laboratories for the cinematic language defining his new feature 'Rose of Nevada'.

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Live Action, Premiere

Retro-Futuristic Consumerism Meets Modern Day Existential Dread in Oscar Garth’s Absurdist Sci-Fi Short ‘Benji’

Oscar Garth walks us through using dialogue-free performances, hand built robot bins and retro-futurist whimsy as a Trojan horse for something much darker.

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Live Action

The Meet-Cute You Tell vs. The One That Actually Happened Collide in Leve Kühl’s Grindr Spot ‘Peas’

Leve Kühl unpacks the narrative power of embracing queer specificity while subverting the holiday ad format for his steamy Grindr Christmas spec advert.

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Live Action, Premiere

A Teenage Couple’s Young Love Meets a Harsh and Unsettling Morning After in Liz Rao’s ‘The Truck’

Eschewing traditional car shots, Liz Rao reveals how she mirrored the restrictions of regressive laws by trapping her characters in a tense confined space.

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Live Action, Premiere

A News Anchor’s Viral Gaffe Unmasks Marriage Turmoil in Will Mayo & Ian Scott McGregor’s Comedy ‘The Mountain’

Will Mayo and Ian Scott McGregor explore the imagined melodrama behind a real-life viral video, using sharp visual storytelling to blend humour and pathos.

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Live Action, Premiere

Randa Ali Traverses a Delicate Exploration of Memory and a Daughter’s Mourning of Her Estranged Father in ‘Mango’

Randa Ali’s 'Mango' depicts the delicate bonds between memory, loss, and the spaces that hold them, as a woman returns to her family house for the last time.

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Live Action, Premiere

Nicholas Finegan Cracks the Brittle Shell of Masculine Stoicism in His Intimate Neo-Western ‘Some Kind of Paradise’

British filmmaker Nicholas Finegan explores masculine vulnerabilities in American cowboy and Grindr hook-up culture in his neo-Western drama short.

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Live Action

Grace Tan Transforms Trauma Into a Story of Visceral Reclamation Through the Radical Power of Queer Pole Dance

Grace Tan navigates personal grief and the physical vocabulary of pole dance to transform Madison Godfrey’s memoir-in-verse into a triumphant short film.

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Live Action, Premiere

One Room, Two People and Everything Left Unsaid in Iris Breward’s Fly in the Ointment Short ‘Afterplay’

Iris Breward digs into her method for crafting a comedy of avoidance where a couple in a bed, post-coital, deploy every weapon except honesty, and both lose.

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Live Action

How a Recurring Daymare of Isolation and Gentrification Led to Lucas Murphy’s ‘You Can’t Talk to the Dude’

Lucas Murphy explains how his own anxieties of gentrification and living alone became a mysterious horror comedy that begs the question - what would 'you' do?

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