The film does a remarkable job of tying something as dark and disturbing as substance abuse and its many devastating consequences with the innocence of childhood and its fantasies. The story opens with the mingling of two very contrasting images in the same vein. 

Our young protagonist Samir plays with his toys, his voice overlapping with the sobbing of a woman, and the visuals of broken glass. His immediate reality is defined by alcoholism and substance abuse of his parents, and the consequent neglect that it leads to. 

The child is quick to take comfort in fantasies that the adult viewer knows will probably never come true. The film’s biggest triumph lies in how skillfully it portrays this contrast and paints a heartbreaking world by simply using a child’s perspective as its primary storytelling tool. The screenplay is constructed with equal care to ensure no beat or moment is left under-utilized, driving its message home with impact and clarity.

Night Games | Short Film Nominee

The documentary presents an insightful nexus of art and empowerment, of music and upliftment, via its interactions with a group of musicians. With its six-member group, the youngest being seven years old, the film engages with the significance of drums as a source of inspiration, hope, and motivation. 

The two voices in the documentary introduce the viewer to a world of drumlines, and the ideas that this particular group stands for. Drumlines have been part of marching bands of Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) for decades, now forming a thriving culture of competition and creative overlaps in Chicago which is precisely what the film explores. 

From choreography consisting of successive swift movements to deft tricks with drumsticks, the narrative engages with all the various elements of the performance, alongside the emotional significance that it carries for the performers. Though the editing of the end result evidences a slight choppiness, the film presents relevant social and cultural explorations of art, performance, and their relationship with society at large.

Kaotic Drumline: Drumming With a Difference | Short Film Nominee

The film is a brief capsule marked by its explosion of colors, emotions, and visual experiments. A young filmmaker, John is shooting a scene with Alicia and Connor, and all seems to be going well. However, when he steps out of the room for a break, he overhears a conversation between his two actors as they mock and ridicule him while pretending to be supportive and friendly. 
Through the scene unfolding before us, placed parallel to the one unfolding in John’s mind, a story of past loss, heartbreak, as well as self-doubt and betrayal is conjured for audiences. The title of the film is further echoed in the developing events as those around John maintain a charade of friendship in a bid to exploit his skills for their own pursuits. 

The film presents a crucial moment in its brevity, and some more. Additionally, it experiments with its edit and visual progression to take the viewer deeper into its protagonist's internal struggles, in the process, establishing a strong premise that could efficiently serve as the starting point of a longer project in the future.

Deceive to Achieve | Short Film Nominee

When the viewer is first introduced to the eponymous protagonist, little do they realize what is truly in store for them. A peppy man is on his way to work as a nurse at an old age home. At the home itself we are introduced to three characters, each of which he finds a way to torture while maintaining the same peppiness we had been introduced to earlier. 

The film is an endeavor to employ satire and an element of the absurd to present a very relevant message, one about the neglect and abuse of the elderly. Its desired approach is defined by dark humor to portray it all. Additionally, there is a stab at playing around with the edit, with quick shots and tight frames to conjure it all. 

The narrative moves swiftly between emotional states, creating a disorienting, heady cocktail of something mean and nasty unfolding before you. It invokes concern in the viewer regarding the characters we see around the protagonist, but much like the characters themselves, the viewer too is at the mercy of the many cruel antics of the protagonist, watching them develop in quick succession as the film begins and concludes as instantly as it had begun.

HeNurse | Short Film Nominee

The film opens with Seo-Won, the protagonist, sharing the day-to-day life of her children with another mother. Despite the superfluous mundaneness of the conversation, the lament of a home left behind in a different country becomes apparent. However, before the viewer can declare the film to be the exploration of immigrant identity, the narrative deliberately fractures itself, presenting us with fragments of memory, thoughts, arguments, and forgotten troubles that lie somewhere buried in a life lived long and hard. 

In the process, familial guilt, anger, resentment, loss, but more importantly, the people who get left behind, alongside those who leave, are conjured by the film. However, how much of memory can truly be trusted? The film presents the question, while emphasizing how sometimes memory, no matter how unreliable a narrator, is the only entity that you have left, the only tenuous connection to an even more fragile notion of home. 

Through a competent screenplay, and equally complementary performances, the narrative conjures all of this, and some more. It spans an entire spectrum of identity, and belongingness, both ideas disrupted by disorienting thoughts, the causes of this disorientation eventually explained at the end. All of this is then very intimately tied with the protagonist's experience of not only having left a home behind but also the relentless efforts of building one in a foreign land.

Home | Short Film Nominee

Shot on a phone, the film presents a notably earnest and heartfelt endeavor in exploring an idea of magic, one that we often leave behind as we move forward in the world. A woman, feeling lost and drowning in despair, has found her way back to a childhood haunt, a corner in the middle of a lush forest where she communed with the fairies as a young girl. With sparkle on her eyes and an unwavering trust in magic, she would leave little tokens of love for the woodland creatures. However, as adulthood ushered in different responsibilities and roles, the fairies were soon left behind and forgotten. 
After all these years, life has once again led her back to the same spot of magic and wonder. Is it still capable of invoking something in her? The film answers the question in a heartwarming manner. The performance of its sole character becomes one of the most notable triumphs of the film, alongside its storytelling, both of which pave the path for more projects with a larger trove of resources in the future.

Who I Was Before I Forgot | Short Film Nominee

The capsule narrative of the short film presents a woman’s struggle to tick all the right boxes on the list of expectations society has of her. Be it with parents at home, or passers-by as she sits in her yard, there is always a fixed role that she is expected to play for everyone. 
The film presents not only an exploration of all of these roles but also punctures them to reveal the emptiness that constitutes them. There is further an emphatic articulation of how damaging these approaches can be for women, taking them further and further away from happiness in a bid to please everyone else but themselves. The end result of the film maintains its pace, and even though defined by a limitation, uses the available resources, alongside shot construction and editing, with efficiency, competence, and skill.

The “Perfect” Girl | Short Film Nominee

At first glance, the film presents a regular evening when three students complete an assignment the old-school way - in a library surrounded by books. However, while their research might be underway away from screens, something forces them to pay attention to their phones. 

The three soon begin to receive horrifying videos that completely alter the course of this mundane night. As violence makes its presence felt, it becomes clear that a terrible entity has the library, and the fate of those inside it, in its grip. The narrative does a zealous job of employing a fixed physical space to invoke horror, alongside the devotion of its cast and makeup department to portray it all for the viewer. 

The moment thus presented is suspended in time within the brevity of the end result which wastes no beats, and in the process, keeps the storytelling and the subsequent narrative, controlled, engaging, and tight all along.

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