Live Action Category

Live Action

Lily Rutterford & Lucy Minderides Present a Puppet-Powered Musical Journey Into the Chaos of ‘Dating in Your 20s’

Lily Rutterford & Lucy Minderides recount how they built a bathroom world populated by towel puppets to explore a woman's chaotic mid-date inner monologue.

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Live Action, Premiere

Firas Itani Charts the Invisible Sisyphean Weight of Everyday Labour in Tense Drama ‘Lower Ground’

Denying any relief, Firas Itani uses framing, contrasting colour & relentless routine to depict skewed power dynamics in his portrait of everyday servitude.

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Live Action, Premiere

Amandine Thomas & Gerardo Coello Escalante Capture the Uneasy Nuance of the Tourism Economy in Drama Short ‘SUSANA’

Amandine Thomas & Gerardo Coello Escalante explain why they broke the fourth wall to implicate viewers in the uncomfortable economic realities of mass tourism.

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Live Action

Lope Serrano’s ‘The Cause Of The Accident That Started The Fire’ Turns Creative Crisis Into Meta-Narrative Excellence

We learn why Lope Serrano used a printed waveform as a structural guide to make creative paralysis tangible in his celebrated Spanish film industry showcase.

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Live Action, Premiere

An AI-Powered Sex Robot Exposes a Relationship in Crisis in the Nüesch Sisters’ Dark Comedy ‘Marriage Unplugged’

From a glossy sex shop to a sterile home, sister-directors Florine & Kim Nüesch describe using visual world-building to map a relationship’s decay.

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Live Action, Premiere

Gus Reed Choreographs a Delicate Dance of Discontent in His Enigimatic Disquieting Short ‘Losing Season’

Gus Reed breaks down the precise blocking used to map a psychological power struggle when a woman's stagnation is disturbed by an uninvited visitor.

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Live Action, Premiere

Jessica Barr Blurs Performance And Personal Trauma In Her Intimate, Visually Claustrophobic Acting Short ‘Private Moments’

Jessica Barr discusses using the meta-narrative of an acting class to explore the pressure on female filmmakers to mine personal trauma for their art.

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Live Action, Premiere

Amir Youssef Constructs a Tender Child’s-Eye View of Personal Loss Amongst Historical Rupture in ‘Dawn Every Day’

Using wide lenses and a meticulous B&W palette, director Amir Youssef locks us at eye-level with an eight-year-old boy grappling with a world coming apart.

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Live Action, Premiere

Love and Loathing Intertwine in Katie Lambert’s Perfectly Formed Teenage Desire Comedy ‘I Hate Helen’

Katie Lambert take us all back to school and maps out the disco choreography and swimming pool shooting of her effervescent coming of age comedy short.

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Awards, Live Action

Harry Lighton Navigates the Intersection of Kink and Suburban Mundanity In His Subversive Queer BIFA Feature ‘Pillion

DN alum Harry Lighton discusses crafting a visual language that finds the tenderness within the transgressive intimacy of his tender tale of queer first love.

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Awards, Live Action

Gus Flind-Henry & George Malcher Capture the Chaos and Heart of Teaching in BIFA Nominated Short ‘A Sisyphean Task’

Gus Flind-Henry and George Malcher share how small moments, big pressures and authenticity shaped their portrait of teaching in a South London state school.

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Awards, Live Action

Cal McMau Directs Balletic Violence and Claustrophobic Tension in His BIFA Winning Prison Thriller ‘Wasteman’

Cal McMau reveals how he embraced tight confines when choreographing the violence in his BIFA-nominated debut feature portrait of a merciless prison ecosystem.

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