Female Protagonist Tag Archive

Film Festival, Live Action

Cannes Double-Hitter Vida Skerk Finds Solidarity in the Industrial Sublime in Haunting ‘Left Behind, Still Standing’

Vida Skerk's second consecutive La Cinef Cannes selected short binds a closing British steelworks and the immigrant overseeing it into one haunted reckoning.

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Animation, Film Festival

Fanny Capu Unburdens the Next Generation From the Suffocating Weight of Legacy in Stop-Motion Cannes Short ‘Pickled’

Fanny Capu on engineering a dancing puppet for her grad NFTS Cannes premiering short that asks what each generation is owed and what heritage it can discard.

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Live Action

Devotion Curdles Into Something Far Darker in Elliott Louis McKee’s Seductive Berlin-Set Romance ‘Forever Yours’

Elliott Louis McKee unpacks how they seduced audiences with tender romance before dismantling it, turning unreliable memory into moral disorientation.

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Live Action, Premiere

Maya Winkler Explores Boobs, Existential Dread & the Absurdity of Women’s Healthcare in Off-Kilter Comedy ‘Lumps’

A breast lump scare spirals into deadpan chaos as two mid-20s women navigate the absurdities of the medical system with twisted humour and defiant joy.

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Film Festival, Live Action

“It Is an Infectious Product” Designing a 45-Year-Old Masterpiece: Muzaffar Ali on ‘Umrao Jaan’s’ Timeless Appeal

45 years on, Muzaffar Ali unpacks how a painter's eye, a poet's ear and Lucknow's Kathak heritage shaped the timeless femininity of his bio-epic.

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Live Action, Premiere

Ruhi Radke Crushes the Sexy Virginity Myth in Her Cringeworthy but Empowering Short for All the Wallflowers ‘Squash’

Ruhi Radke on making the unsexiest sex story ever and a representation of the first time that's funny, shaming, and ultimately a love story with herself.

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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, 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

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

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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