Tag: Drama Short Film Review

When going into Katie McNeice’s Lambing one does not (but perhaps should) expect to be momentarily devastated by the fate of a lamb. An 18-minute drama about the birth of an intersex child to parents expecting a boy (the first such film in Ireland), Lambing explores the agony that parents are unnecessarily put through and… Continue reading Lambing: Parents, and the Baby They Must Choose

Patrick Ireland’s Ill Fares the Land succeeds in creating the impression of something alive out of itself. And indeed it is alive, chiefly with guilt, fear, and unceasing friction between an impoverished island and the larger world. The protagonist is a young teenage boy, who has not spoken in nearly two years, overwhelmed by worlds… Continue reading Ill Fares the Land: Guilt, Fear and Conflict in a Story (Not) About a Mermaid

Cameron Currin and Cody Kristapovich’s 18-minute Mandje is a loose adaptation of The Fisherman and His Wife (adapted by Josh Hughes) substituting the grand scale of its progression for a more rustic, folk mood. The film wants to reinforce the anti-fairytale nature of the story and thus attempts to be psychological and gritty, something along… Continue reading Mandje: The Limits of Greed and the Steep Fall Beyond

Valentina Tross’ God Willing, written by Hooriah Riaz, is ambitiously and beautifully melodramatic, if somewhat constrained by its runtime. At under 16 minutes, the film portrays the last leg of a musician’s life using an emotional excess that perfectly fits the premise. The closer it gets to the end, the narrative gets further entrenched in… Continue reading God Willing: Tale of Slow Ruin and its Violent Grief

Playground constructs a duality of experience for its child protagonist in her relationship with her mother: frightening chaos on the one hand, and silence on the other. Through this duality, Yaxing Lin’s 16-minute drama frames the girl against all adult life as a scale for her smallness, a measure in its stead for her loneliness… Continue reading Playground: The View from the Left Behind Daughter

Andy Kastelic’s The Countryman has blossomed out of the Western, owes its distinction to the genre, and leaves behind the impression of something that is, in many ways, truly remarkable. With only 22 minutes on hand, its wandering protagonist has the task of changing the nature of a farming community facing the brunt of post-war… Continue reading The Countryman: Negotiation with the Rules of the Western

Dealing with the disaffection of being an artist of any kind today, Julian Sibal’s Jake, the failure is a 9-minute drama about a young struggling writer who goes from one rejection to another. His house is a shrine to his failures, the star of which is the English degree on his wall. As he contemplates… Continue reading Jake, the failure: The Experience of Despair in the Face of Devaluation

Opening with a grandmother-granddaughter at a beach, Drifting Boat contends on the one hand with the unceasing desire to regain the childhood home and on the other, with the permanent disconnect in an alien land. To do this, the film brings the drama down to a domestic level: an old Chinese woman, whose family blends… Continue reading Drifting Boat: In Perpetual Search of the Lost Home

Written and directed by Lauren Campi, Pine is a beautiful 14:15-minute long narrative that carries the fuzzy warmth of Christmas but well packaged into a dramatic short. While we may be well off the season, the short couldn’t have come at a better time, considering the chaos we are living in. Intuitive, reflective and poignantly… Continue reading Pine: A Drama That Tugs At Your Heart