Short Film Directors Detail How Their Stories Reclaim Power in the World Right Now
Short films give audiences (and award voters) lots to ponder about, whether it’s the current state of society or how art can be an agent of change. Speaking with Variety over Zoom, eight short film directors and creators discuss their stories and the one universal fight to reclaim power in a world that won’t give it.
“Mercy”
In “Mercy,” Mjøen urges a discussion about the tarnishing of assumed guilt by association. “It’s much more interesting to me to try to tell a story that the audience will come out of having more questions than answers,” says writer-director Hedda Mjøen.
Based on a true story, “it’s about Guru, who’s good friend has recently been accused of rape,” she says. “She has to decide if she can still be his friend or not. It’s a film about what you do when friendship and loyalty collide with your moral conviction.” With “Mercy”’s awards-qualifying run, the filmmakers are moving into production for a feature rooted in the same narrative space. “It centers on the same topic as the short film,” she says, “the same way of handling this issue of sexual violence, but it takes it into a courtroom drama.”
Mjøen adds, “The main characters are people that are getting connected to the trial or the court case in different ways and having to suddenly make a decision that can change people’s lives forever. It’s the same type of movie, but it’s in the feature film.”
“Clout”
Friendship is also at the heart of “Clout” by Jordan Murphy Doidge, a social impact coming-of-age story inspired by “Stand By Me.” “It’s a cautionary tale about young people addicted to social media” where a somewhat shunned teenager’s desperation to be liked rests on the success of his next livestream, promising to show where he found a dead body, says Doidge.
“We wanted to put a fable into this story and we thought that ‘The Boy Who Cried Wolf’ is a great metaphor for what social media is in our lives,” he shares. Backed by a number of charities in the U.K., “Clout” has also secured a theatrical release that also spotlight Q&As with the young cast. All HODs on “Clout” were female, while actress, social media campaigner and British royal Sophie Winkleman served as an executive producer alongside award-winning producer and actor Kim Magnusson.
The story was always conceived as a short, and Doidge says “we’ve had a few companies talk to us about looking at maybe making an anthology series. [Possibly] following the whole kind of ‘Black Mirror’ coming-of-age fable side to the storytelling that we’ve got, and maybe looking at different perspectives that are affected by social media.”
“In the Clouds”
Set in London, “In the Clouds,” the debut short from writer-director Alexandra Bahiyyih Wain centers on two young girls of an Iranian refugee family resettled in an inner-city apartment block, the lure of an outdoor playground forbidden by parents busy with daily domestic life.
“In the Clouds” also marks the first major collaboration between director Wain and executive producer Kyriakos Georgiou, a champion of boundary-pushing independent cinema, alongside rising British Hungarian producer Daniel Panyko, whose award-recognized work has screened at festivals and who was drawn to the film’s deeply personal exploration of grief. “I wanted to show a family that everyone could relate to, could connect with and feel for,” says Wain. “The girls definitely understood the story, they understood their characters but in terms of the wider refugee and immigration conversation that’s happening at the moment, they were definitely protected from that because we just didn’t want them feeling sad and feeling like they were being targeted.”
“Don’t Be Late, Myra”
“Don’t Be Late, Myra” from writer-director Afia Nathaniel, focuses on a 10-year-old girl daydreaming at the end of the school day, who wakes to find she’s missed the bus, her safe ride home. “It’s a survival thriller,” says Nathaniel. While any horror remains off screen, Nathaniel says the film “has been living inside me for a very long time — I was only 9 years old when I was assaulted in the streets of Lahore,” adding that this story “really was forged in that flame of anger. I wanted to break the silence on it and claim this other space and question as to why should the shame belong to the victim only?”
The winner of more than a dozen awards this year already, “Don’t Be Late, Myra” recently joined forces with Equality Now, a global leader in women’s rights, to expand the film’s impact and drive action to end sexual violence. The film is now part of the 16 Days 16 Films Festival that spotlights powerful work by female-identifying filmmakers addressing gender-based violence globally.
“Holy Curse”
A child grappling with their identity is at the heart of “Holy Curse” by Snigdha Kapoor. It’s “about an 11-year-old non-binary child going through bodily changes, puberty and their internal sense of self is in conflict with how their environment perceives them,” says Kapoor whose story focuses on a family in search of a ritual to, in their minds, cleanse the child. “I was just channeling my anger. It’s so much inspired by what I experienced in my growing up years in a very traditional conservative environment where gender was very binary, and we didn’t have the vernacular to understand things.”
The film has already played at “festivals that specifically talk about the South Asian experiences. There are those that talk about queer experiences and just hearing from all different kinds of communities and how people have resonated with it, no matter your gender, no matter your culture.”
“Ovary-Acting”
Ida Melum’s “Ovary-Acting” begins with animated finger pointing, as her stop-motion protagonist Eva is greeted with a barrage of fertility questions by her extended family at a baby-shower. “It was based on my own experiences and being asked why didn’t I have kids? When was I going to have kids?” says Melum. “And that made me really question, ‘Did I want to have kids because I wanted to have them, or did I want to have kids because it was expected of me to have them?’ And not just by the society around me, I was also putting that pressure on myself.”
The comedy takes an unexpected turn when “the pressure mounts and Eva ends up giving birth to her reproductive organ, Ova, and they go on adventure together” including a full-on musical song and dance production. Having premiered at two prestigious film festivals, “Ovary-Acting” has been selected for over 50 festivals worldwide, and has earned multiple accolades.
“Snow Bear”
Hand-drawn animation is the craft Aaron Blaise has been honing for decades, having spent 21 years at Disney, where he drew “The Lion King”’s Nala into existence, along with the tiger Raja in “Aladdin (1992)” and directed “Brother Bear.” Now with “Snow Bear”, he worked solo, undertaking “11,000 drawings over three years, and I was kind of looking deep into myself.” Blaise adds, “I wanted to tell this story about grief and loneliness and finding life again. I lost my wife to breast cancer 20 years ago, and I wanted to tell a story that was kind of metaphoric of that journey, but I didn’t want it to be a downer, so I thought of this lonely polar bear in the Arctic that makes a snow bear companion, but life is delicate, like snow is in the sun.”
Without dialogue, the nuance of the story lies in the expressions of the animals and the landscape they live in, an environmental message developing as Blaise continued to draw. “I didn’t want my short to feel like a PSA,” he says. “It’s much easier to get people to act on emotion. And so if you can create a sense of empathy in this story, which is what I’m trying to do, then if you want to get involved with some type of environmental awareness or something like that, then you’re that much further along by having the story.” Blaise teamed up with Polar Bears International, “which was really cool after we were finished with the film. They’re the world’s largest nonprofit polar bear conservation group.” A fan of teaching others to draw Blaise adds he has “this catchphrase that I always say at the end of every livestream that I do, and it sounds corny, but I really believe in it. As artists, it’s our job to put a little beauty back into the world to get people to think in a different way.”
“Rise”
A true story inspired “Rise” by Jessica Rowlands, about a close friend of hers who runs a boxing academy and orphanage for street kids in Victoria Falls, where the filmmaker grew up. Shot on location in Zimbabwe with an all-African cast and crew, Rowlands says, “It’s a film about resilience, the power of dreams, about quiet heroes and little kids with big dreams.”
Portraying the resilient kid eager to learn and fight his way to a brighter future, Sikhanyiso Ngwenya became the youngest person in history to win the Best Actor recognition at Zimbabwe’s top film awards show at just 10 years old. “As soon as I saw him, I said to the producer, ‘That’s Rise,’ Rowlands recalls. “The shape of his head, the way his eyes move and the way he stands and holds himself, so much of it is nonverbal.”
As for a feature version of “Rise,” Rowlands says, “I’d love to,” adding that the filmmaking team has “been consulting with the government of Zimbabwe about film policy and really changing the landscape of what’s possible and trying to encourage more films to get made in Zimbabwe and Zimbabwean stories to be told there.”
“Mercy”
In “Mercy,” Mjøen urges a discussion about the tarnishing of assumed guilt by association. “It’s much more interesting to me to try to tell a story that the audience will come out of having more questions than answers,” says writer-director Hedda Mjøen.
Based on a true story, “it’s about Guru, who’s good friend has recently been accused of rape,” she says. “She has to decide if she can still be his friend or not. It’s a film about what you do when friendship and loyalty collide with your moral conviction.” With “Mercy”’s awards-qualifying run, the filmmakers are moving into production for a feature rooted in the same narrative space. “It centers on the same topic as the short film,” she says, “the same way of handling this issue of sexual violence, but it takes it into a courtroom drama.”
Mjøen adds, “The main characters are people that are getting connected to the trial or the court case in different ways and having to suddenly make a decision that can change people’s lives forever. It’s the same type of movie, but it’s in the feature film.”
“Clout”
Friendship is also at the heart of “Clout” by Jordan Murphy Doidge, a social impact coming-of-age story inspired by “Stand By Me.” “It’s a cautionary tale about young people addicted to social media” where a somewhat shunned teenager’s desperation to be liked rests on the success of his next livestream, promising to show where he found a dead body, says Doidge.
“We wanted to put a fable into this story and we thought that ‘The Boy Who Cried Wolf’ is a great metaphor for what social media is in our lives,” he shares. Backed by a number of charities in the U.K., “Clout” has also secured a theatrical release that also spotlight Q&As with the young cast. All HODs on “Clout” were female, while actress, social media campaigner and British royal Sophie Winkleman served as an executive producer alongside award-winning producer and actor Kim Magnusson.
The story was always conceived as a short, and Doidge says “we’ve had a few companies talk to us about looking at maybe making an anthology series. [Possibly] following the whole kind of ‘Black Mirror’ coming-of-age fable side to the storytelling that we’ve got, and maybe looking at different perspectives that are affected by social media.”
“In the Clouds”
Set in London, “In the Clouds,” the debut short from writer-director Alexandra Bahiyyih Wain centers on two young girls of an Iranian refugee family resettled in an inner-city apartment block, the lure of an outdoor playground forbidden by parents busy with daily domestic life.
“In the Clouds” also marks the first major collaboration between director Wain and executive producer Kyriakos Georgiou, a champion of boundary-pushing independent cinema, alongside rising British Hungarian producer Daniel Panyko, whose award-recognized work has screened at festivals and who was drawn to the film’s deeply personal exploration of grief. “I wanted to show a family that everyone could relate to, could connect with and feel for,” says Wain. “The girls definitely understood the story, they understood their characters but in terms of the wider refugee and immigration conversation that’s happening at the moment, they were definitely protected from that because we just didn’t want them feeling sad and feeling like they were being targeted.”
“Don’t Be Late, Myra”
“Don’t Be Late, Myra” from writer-director Afia Nathaniel, focuses on a 10-year-old girl daydreaming at the end of the school day, who wakes to find she’s missed the bus, her safe ride home. “It’s a survival thriller,” says Nathaniel. While any horror remains off screen, Nathaniel says the film “has been living inside me for a very long time — I was only 9 years old when I was assaulted in the streets of Lahore,” adding that this story “really was forged in that flame of anger. I wanted to break the silence on it and claim this other space and question as to why should the shame belong to the victim only?”
The winner of more than a dozen awards this year already, “Don’t Be Late, Myra” recently joined forces with Equality Now, a global leader in women’s rights, to expand the film’s impact and drive action to end sexual violence. The film is now part of the 16 Days 16 Films Festival that spotlights powerful work by female-identifying filmmakers addressing gender-based violence globally.
“Holy Curse”
A child grappling with their identity is at the heart of “Holy Curse” by Snigdha Kapoor. It’s “about an 11-year-old non-binary child going through bodily changes, puberty and their internal sense of self is in conflict with how their environment perceives them,” says Kapoor whose story focuses on a family in search of a ritual to, in their minds, cleanse the child. “I was just channeling my anger. It’s so much inspired by what I experienced in my growing up years in a very traditional conservative environment where gender was very binary, and we didn’t have the vernacular to understand things.”
The film has already played at “festivals that specifically talk about the South Asian experiences. There are those that talk about queer experiences and just hearing from all different kinds of communities and how people have resonated with it, no matter your gender, no matter your culture.”
“Ovary-Acting”
Ida Melum’s “Ovary-Acting” begins with animated finger pointing, as her stop-motion protagonist Eva is greeted with a barrage of fertility questions by her extended family at a baby-shower. “It was based on my own experiences and being asked why didn’t I have kids? When was I going to have kids?” says Melum. “And that made me really question, ‘Did I want to have kids because I wanted to have them, or did I want to have kids because it was expected of me to have them?’ And not just by the society around me, I was also putting that pressure on myself.”
The comedy takes an unexpected turn when “the pressure mounts and Eva ends up giving birth to her reproductive organ, Ova, and they go on adventure together” including a full-on musical song and dance production. Having premiered at two prestigious film festivals, “Ovary-Acting” has been selected for over 50 festivals worldwide, and has earned multiple accolades.
“Snow Bear”
Hand-drawn animation is the craft Aaron Blaise has been honing for decades, having spent 21 years at Disney, where he drew “The Lion King”’s Nala into existence, along with the tiger Raja in “Aladdin (1992)” and directed “Brother Bear.” Now with “Snow Bear”, he worked solo, undertaking “11,000 drawings over three years, and I was kind of looking deep into myself.” Blaise adds, “I wanted to tell this story about grief and loneliness and finding life again. I lost my wife to breast cancer 20 years ago, and I wanted to tell a story that was kind of metaphoric of that journey, but I didn’t want it to be a downer, so I thought of this lonely polar bear in the Arctic that makes a snow bear companion, but life is delicate, like snow is in the sun.”
Without dialogue, the nuance of the story lies in the expressions of the animals and the landscape they live in, an environmental message developing as Blaise continued to draw. “I didn’t want my short to feel like a PSA,” he says. “It’s much easier to get people to act on emotion. And so if you can create a sense of empathy in this story, which is what I’m trying to do, then if you want to get involved with some type of environmental awareness or something like that, then you’re that much further along by having the story.” Blaise teamed up with Polar Bears International, “which was really cool after we were finished with the film. They’re the world’s largest nonprofit polar bear conservation group.” A fan of teaching others to draw Blaise adds he has “this catchphrase that I always say at the end of every livestream that I do, and it sounds corny, but I really believe in it. As artists, it’s our job to put a little beauty back into the world to get people to think in a different way.”
“Rise”
A true story inspired “Rise” by Jessica Rowlands, about a close friend of hers who runs a boxing academy and orphanage for street kids in Victoria Falls, where the filmmaker grew up. Shot on location in Zimbabwe with an all-African cast and crew, Rowlands says, “It’s a film about resilience, the power of dreams, about quiet heroes and little kids with big dreams.”
Portraying the resilient kid eager to learn and fight his way to a brighter future, Sikhanyiso Ngwenya became the youngest person in history to win the Best Actor recognition at Zimbabwe’s top film awards show at just 10 years old. “As soon as I saw him, I said to the producer, ‘That’s Rise,’ Rowlands recalls. “The shape of his head, the way his eyes move and the way he stands and holds himself, so much of it is nonverbal.”
As for a feature version of “Rise,” Rowlands says, “I’d love to,” adding that the filmmaking team has “been consulting with the government of Zimbabwe about film policy and really changing the landscape of what’s possible and trying to encourage more films to get made in Zimbabwe and Zimbabwean stories to be told there.”