Tag: Drama Short Film Review

Alex Eskandarkhah’s 20-minute Cycles finds one character reaching towards redemption and another discovering the comfort of a stranger offering a safe space, however precarious.  When Jerome’s (Andre Kelly) evening at home is disrupted by his wayward washing machine, only to also be betrayed by the bill changer at the local laundromat, Jerome finds himself at… Continue reading Cycles: Muted Trauma in the Face of Frenetic Violence in a Drama of Performances

Max Burgoyne-Moore and Salvatore Scarpa’s 19-minute drama Largo uses the child’s gaze to show the flipside of the refugee coin: the despairing longing for home. Starring child actor Zack Elsokari as the protagonist Musa, the film uses the ungovernability of children as a way to excise reactionary, polarising politics and glimpse messy humanity underneath.  Death… Continue reading Largo: Anywhere is Safer Than Here, But Nowhere Else is Home

Artii Smith’s The Mistake is a drama with psychological thriller undertones to it as two brothers clash and meditate on the diverging paths that led them to where they are when the film opens: one a medical student, the other with a dead body on his floor and coke traces under his nose. Matthew (Brian… Continue reading The Mistake: A Drama of Sibling Rivalry and What We Do to Be Seen

Luca Mazzara’s 11-minute Krisis situates itself in the dreamscapes created in the shadow of chronic illness. Following a woman’s path out of it and into a full relationship with the natural world, the film takes a poetic, surrealist approach to the out of body experience of a body betrayed by its failing. Zoe, played by… Continue reading Krisis: A Poetic Drama of Finding Life

Demitri Zujew’s 19-minute Crease brings its audience deep into the fold with its close-ups in 1.33:1 right off the bat. A story set in and about a school (more precisely, the institution of schools), following a pair of boys as well as the school’s celebrated principal, Crease goes in a lot of different directions that… Continue reading Crease(ЗАЛОМ): An Austere Drama on the Microcosm of School

Marcellus Cox’s Liquor Bank is a tense drama about a young ex-Marine’s relapse into alcoholism a hair’s breadth away from his one-year mark of sobriety. An unlikeable character, it is his distaste for the pain of living that both makes him identifiable and renders him a bit too obstinate at times. Like Nadia Vulvokov once… Continue reading Liquor Bank: Misery Hates No-Nonsense Company in Alcoholism Drama

Harrison Winter Altmann’s Curtain Call, co-written with Imogen Fennessey, is a single take comedy about a narcissist’s ego taking hit after hit where he was instead hoping for a boost. A once-famous actor now doing community theatre, Grant sees everyone in the crew as beings beneath him, waiting for crumbs of his aura and genius… Continue reading Curtain Call: A Single Take Production Drama That Knows Why It’s There

Kevyn Tapia’s bold and surprising NEX-IS-US is a 35-minute drama with three interlinked narratives unfolding over the course of a day. It is a remarkably well written film, especially for a young filmmaker, even if it sometimes drops the ball.  Featuring five teenagers and the adults on their periphery, the non-linear narrative makes the pieces… Continue reading NEX-IS-US: Profoundly Sorrowful Teen Ensemble Drama

Max Hechtman and Christonikos Tsalikis’s Abigail, written by Jason K. Allen, Max Hechtman, and Meryl Hechtman, is a view into the swirling, disorienting mass of grief that has woven itself into the life of an aged man without his wife. Instead of a chronological order, the structure sandwiches the good days within the bad to… Continue reading Abigail: A Powerhouse Performance in Drama About End of Life and Heartbreak

Daniel Everitt-Lock’s Conscript is a 13-minute drama about the night before a young man leaves for his conscription and is doomed. With the ghost of nuclear war embedded into his family, Alex’s last evening at home becomes a little break in time that is like nothing before or after that day.  The draft brings old… Continue reading Conscript: Atomic Tests Drama Bolstering Truth with Fiction