Rob Munday
Quite often when writing the introduction for these Best of the Month posts, I struggle to know where to put my focus as I look back on the last 30(ish) days – this month is certainly an exception. October is always usually an easy one, as I could talk about our spooky season coverage, however, the tenth month of 2022 was a little different at S/W HQ, as our focus was split between our usual curation and the launch of our exciting new platform Shortverse.
Two years in the making, Shortverse is a place where filmmakers, industry professionals, and fans can join together to celebrate the joys of short film. Offering a set of new tools to get your film seen and connect with a community of filmmakers & fans (something we’ve also wanted to do better here), our hope is that alongside S/W our new platform can help elevate the arena of short film to the heights it deserves to be at. If you are yet to check out Shortverse, you can sign-up now and start uploading your own content or leaving reviews. If you do, be sure to say Hi! – Rob Munday, Managing Editor.
TEAM FAVORITES
While the birth of Shortverse obviously took a lot of our attention over October, we still managed to feature 18 films during the month, including seven online premieres. Horror was obviously a popular genre during our October curation, with one-third of our films focused on spooky subjects, but we also delivered energetic tales of samurai frogs, impactful docs on migrating polar bears and one-take tales of summer love. For our trio of Best of the Month picks though, we’ve selected a tense morality tale, one of the best horror shorts to ever feature on our pages and an inspirational documentary released for Indigenous Peoples’ Day.
***
July by Mauritz Brekke Solberg
When a childish prank goes horribly wrong, a group of friends must decide how far they’re willing to go to make things right in Mauritz Brekke Solberg‘s thrilling drama Juli. (July.). Set against the backdrop of a hot summer day in the backwoods of Norway, the peaceful location quickly turns into an unsettling terrain they can no longer escape. The film’s alluring romanticism of youth, coupled with true adulthood on the horizon, makes July’s dark exploration of responsibility a heart pounding ride that will leave a lasting impression. – Chelsea Lupkin
***
Moshari by Nuhash Humayun
As a programmer for Short of the Week, there are certain films you see on the festival circuit that you instantly want for your platform. With Halloween approaching, if there was just one title I could have picked to feature on S/W for spooky season it would have been Nuhash Humayun’s lingering Bangladeshi horror Moshari. Set in a world plagued by vampires, where Europe and America have fallen under attack from these monstrous bloodsuckers, we join two sisters from Dhaka as they battle to survive, protected only by their moshari (mosquito net). – Rob Munday
***
The Runner by Gabriela Osio Vanden and Jack Weisman
Even though I’m not much of a runner myself, my last two reviews for S/W were about running. On the other hand, I’ve written quite a lot about mental health and continue to be an advocate for more awareness about the subject. Amar Chebib’s documentary The Runner combines both of these aspects in a portrait about the perseverance of mind and body. In a figurative sense, you can’t outrun your problems and you shouldn’t run away from them. But more literally speaking, it actually can work. There are numerous studies on the positive effects of physical activity and the benefits of nature on our wellbeing, which The Runner effectively reminds us of. The film also provided me with a new favorite inspirational quote about what it means to struggle for what you believe in: “I’m not a common person. I don’t expect to be understood.” The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner, I suppose. – Georg Csarmann
***
Most Viewed
La mujer de Héctor (Hector’s Woman) by Ricardo Varona
One of the most intricate short character portraits I’ve seen in quite some time, filmmaker Ricardo Varona’s La mujer de Héctor (Hector’s Woman) has been stuck in my head ever since I first screened it. The best kind of filmmaking is layered: ostensibly simple set-ups can be peeled back to reveal complexity underneath. With Hector’s Woman, what starts as a potentially melodramatic premise (a struggling mother must raise her child while her husband is incarcerated), ends up being a nuanced look at the various roles the protagonist, Paola, must inhabit, torn between her maternal obligations and her own desires. The result is a deft look at the complexity that lives within every person, and this strange dance between how one perceives themself and how one is perceived by others – Ivan Kander