It's incredibly difficult to pin down what this film truly means to a viewer. It is ethereal and visceral at the same time. It is extremely complex, nuanced, evasive, and yet, at its core, has a simple premise. While the subject it deals with is endlessly layered, its voice and tone is fairly straightforward. But wait, what genre does it belong to? Is it dramatic, surreal, violent in its execution of its story? Is it all or none of it? As you struggle with the questions and their answers, it is indeed in this compulsion you feel to engage with it that the success of the film lies. The body of the narrative is the poem of the same name by Olivia Gatwood. Though both Dani Pearce and Gatwood belong to different parts of the world, having first participated in the conversation around this short film virtually, Backpedal further goes on to exhibit the transcendence of art, the universality of an experience when it's treated with absolute honesty and sincerity. The story becomes a commentary on gender, the desperate need of adolescents to fit in with their peers, in general, and of young women trying to fit in with their male counterparts in particular. Violent images of a murder are invoked, as are those of grief, tragedy and loss. It's astonishing how much the film manages to convey in its short length. Further, it's unequivocally loud and clear in its message, one expressed in an experimental manner, ensuring that the story and its images will continue to haunt you, making you return to it over and over again after your first interaction with the world conjured by Backpedal.

Backpedal | Short Film of the Day

‘Women Lockdown’ is an intensely personal conversation about dreams, hopes, passions, but also things that weigh you down, stand in the way of everything you want or desire. 
The tonality and approach remains beautifully intimate throughout as the narrative introduces us to five women. The authenticity with which their experiences are brought to life allows the film a universality that works most wonderfully in its favor. 

The visuals are experimental, suffused with symbolism and metaphors, coupled with a background score that further amplifies the sentiment the narrative intends to convey. The emotion thus brought to life is honest and poignant, as the conversation, and the ensuing visuals, continue to flow with ease and seamlessness.

Women Lockdown | Short Film of the Day

The realm of ‘Vultures’ is constructed with a refreshing uniqueness of voice that remains steadfast throughout the entirety of the film. It presents a space inhabited by only three characters, each more powerful than the other in the absolutely stunning performances and bodily movements they bring to life. 
The viewer is presented with a dystopic world, at the brink of its end where two vultures fight over what is left as the last vestiges of existence.
The heavy symbolism and metaphors continue to heighten the tension within the narrative which carefully controls and maintains its energy and intensity. 
The actors, weaved into an equally complementary screenplay and visual development, ensure that the many intentions of the plot achieve a fitting portrayal on camera. Though not all metaphors would be grasped at first glance, demanding a deeper engagement on behalf of the viewer, the film conveys each emotion and sentiment that it means to with ease and success.

Vultures | Short Film Nominee

‘Dear Diary’ is the most lovely splash of colors, ideas, music, and well… old selves. The film is beautifully imagined and performed, with a visual grammar that is steadfast and consistent when it comes to the art and set design. The conciseness of the narrative, almost minimalist in its approach, does more to convey with simplicity than anything else. 
Not devoid of humor, the screenplay brings to life a deliberate, effervescent frivolity that works in its favor most remarkably. We are presented with a protagonist who takes us into her world by the hand. The primary doorway to this realm is the regrettable experiences that she documented in her beloved diary, experiences, and memories that she would now rather exorcise, as she shares herself. 
This journey from remembrance to sharing and acceptance to the eventual expression of the desire to expel them is covered keeping the approach carefully controlled, deliberately lean, and seamlessly entertaining throughout. It would be a wonderful prospect to see more projects and storytelling imagined and conceptualized in this manner.

Dear Diary | Short Film of the Day

Stunning visuals of the limitless outdoors - snowclad mountain peaks in all their glory, oceans with water stretching out as far as the eye can see, and cloudy skies that remain forever moving - bring to life this beautiful narrative about change being the only constant. 

The images of nature are interweaved with the fluidity of the human body, suggesting internal struggles and the inability of things to stay still. The choreographed visuals are brief but seamless and expert, allowing the two components, nature and humans, to come together as a composite whole. The end result is crafted with care, is meaningful in its beauty, and perhaps can be explored as a longer project in the future.

Life is Movement | Short Film of the Day

Trigger warning: This film includes strobe lighting effects that could be triggering for some viewers with photosensitive epilepsy. Viewer discretion is recommended. 

The film presents a singular union of ideas about the duality of the self with unrestricted, unbound appetites. The thematic exploration further asserts that the two, in fact, are intrinsic to each other. When a dark, denied self finally rises from the deep pits where it might have lain dormant and forgotten for a long, long time, it unleashes upon the world an inexorable, unstoppable hunger, underlines the film. If one self stays in the light, the other continues to grow and expand in the dark until it reaches a point of no return. 

The film talks of a monstrous being, an ever-consuming, ever-hungering woman, and the endless darkness that she encompasses. She could very well be the monster within us all, the monster of our denied selves. She could be every human with their greed and lust and forever increasing desire to consume more and more. 

The narrative ties its artistic and creative intentions with artificial intelligence to realize its vision, and in the process, presents to the viewer a phantasmagoria of images about a scheme of the inner self to let itself be known through a conspiracy with appetite. This destructive hunger that reigns free remains meticulously imagined and executed throughout.

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