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

Ali is faced with the indomitable task of tying loose ends after the death of a family member, his sister, Mahra. The subsequent story that comes into existence is a moody thriller about societal pressures, and more importantly, a fractured psyche that can follow in the wake of these pressures. 
Ali is left powerless in the face of what is expected of him, and how he must navigate his family’s position which is now incontrovertibly tied to his sister’s suicide. The crushing fear of the truth coming out is palpable in the manner the protagonist is delineated, alongside an equally complementary performance that brings him to life. 

If on the one hand, there is concealment of the true causes of Mahra's death, in a bid to protect the family’s reputation and sense of honor, on the other hand, is a grieving brother with no time and space for his pain to be dealt with. The chasm between what one wants to do and what is expected of them is allowed a notable portrayal in the film. The narrative handles the intensity and the direness of the circumstance Ali battles with earnestness, alongside deliberate stylistic choices of visuals and background score, to further embellish the storytelling, making the film an engaging watch.

The Apartment | 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.

Sent | Short Film Nominee

The documentary engages with a crucial, and difficult subject matter. It introduces the viewer to primarily four men who had all been given varying sentences of incarceration between 1994 and 2003. Alongside the story of their incarceration, however, is another story, one of hope and upliftment. The film deep dives into a bachelor’s degree program in California that began with the intention of not only giving degrees to inmates but also allow them a second chance at life. 
As the documentary's subjects take us into their journey of reform and eventual rehabilitation within society, they use words like “reenergized”. They speak of a life they never thought was possible for them, and lastly, and more significantly, they speak of breaking the cycle of injustice, violence, and crime that had previously seemed unshakable. 
Through the scenes of prison life and the world beyond as well, the film presents how dehumanizing the experience of incarceration can be, often depriving inmates any and all chance of reclaiming their humanity in society. It engages with ideas of redemption and hope, alongside internal prison politics, the subsequent networks, and a sense of brotherhood that it can conjure. 
The overarching message of the film remains one of the freeing power of education, and the influence it exerts on not just one aspect of existence, but in the formation of culture altogether, alongside the significance of community effort in uplifting human society as a whole.

College in Prison | Short Film Nominee

On the night of a very crucial performance, one that could define his future as a musician, Jai finds himself with a broken instrument. As a frantic scamper begins to somehow procure a tabla, with only a few hours to the performance, he receives the most unusual phone call. 

A man is willing to provide the instrument, as long as Jai can deliver a plate of butter chicken within the hour to the given address. Alongside this bizarre, but completely hilarious and entertaining route, is Jai’s own internal performance anxiety, manifesting itself in a shiver of the hand. 

The narrative allows a successful portrayal of all of these elements, irrespective of a few rough edges in the overall end result, presenting characters that are endearing, and notably fitting as hapless performers, or intimidating antagonists. The deep potential with regard to storytelling and narrative-building, alongside some skilled performances, is unmissable, paving the path for more engagement with similar stories and characters in the future.

Curry in a Hurry | Short Film Nominee

The film raises pertinent issues that have always been of extreme importance when it comes to the human condition and the fate of humanity, but more so in contemporary times when each horror of every atrocity committed is available for consumption on our myriad screens. The narratorial approach to the same thematic concerns is interesting and experimental. 
 
A man records a video essay about two films, ‘The Zone of Interest’ and ‘The Nasty Girl’, and utilizes it to comment on the ideas of kindness, cruelty, and mankind’s implicit and complicit behavioral patterns when it comes to them. It asserts that the distractions of modern society further enable the nurturing of cold indifference and damaging distancing from empathy and sympathy. 

As this film within a film unfolds, the protagonist himself attempts to escape a terrible fate of mortal peril that constantly makes its presence felt. The final result remains especially notable in the creative as well as the visual approaches it adopts to share all of this, developing alongside a dedicated, impassioned performance.

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