The film opens on a lovely, light-hearted note, completely beguiling and leaving the viewer unprepared for the sinister plot developments that await them at the most unexpected corner. The laughter and giggles soon give way to an awkward unease that come to constitute the power dynamics of three teenaged girls. There is a suggestion of the threats that girls alone at night are left vulnerable to in a patriarchal set-up where their identities are often reduced to their sexuality. This is presented to the viewer in the form of three young men they soon encounter. However, the plot still continues to revolve around the discomfort that is growing among the girls, alongside the thrill and excitement of breaking a few rules - all three parties unequal participants in these emotions. The narrative manages to invoke a powerful delineation of the concern of a girl who is insecure and worried about her friend as well as the arrival of a new member that potentially threatens to shake the security of their duo. The plot finally comes to revolve around a single decision that would change their lives forever. It is perhaps also a remote comment on how, along with patriarchy, young women themselves can hurt each other while being preoccupied with a sense of competition with each other that society has conditioned them to internalise. There is also a reminder of the recklessness of teenage life which might result in rash decisions, while not always conveying at first the gravity of the consequences they are capable of leading to.

Night Swim | Short Film of the Day

If a short film is simply the portrayal of a moment in its characters' life, the choice of this particular moment by Miranda Manziano exhibits uniqueness and originality of thought. Velour opens on a note of calmness; it's morning and a woman sleeps in her pristinely white bed, wrinkled enough only to reveal the presence of its occupant. However, this sense of tranquility is disturbed, before the viewer becomes too comfortable, by the protagonist's screams into her pillow. It is important to spend time allowing this image to sink in as the perfect harbinger of what's to come - a sincere engagement with trauma and the manner in which it comes to affect the life of someone who grapples with it on a daily basis. After the emptiness and the silence of her house, Valentina is introduced to the viewer as being a senior professional in a fashion house, a woman who is quite the opposite of what they might have been led to assume so far. This juxtaposition is especially interesting for it will serve to accentuate and amplify the sentiment and series of events that are about to follow. The protagonist's struggle to overcome a traumatic experience of a sexual assault leads her to a dominatrix, Velour, introducing the audience to the premise of the film. Through the controlled interactions of its characters, the short film presents a relevant engagement with trauma, mental health, sexual violence, and progress just when things seem too bleak. While growth and recovery might not follow a linear trajectory, there is indeed something to be said about the hope and motivation to never give in, to forever keep pushing instead of succumbing to the darkness, and it is in this reminder that the film acquires all its power, foregrounding the experience of a survivor who is more than what her trauma often threatens to reduce her to, and who is perhaps finally on the path of overcoming and vanquishing the darkness within once and for all.

Velour | Short Film of the Day

Trigger Warning: Sexual Assault 

Sexual assault is perhaps the only crime where the survivor, and not the perpetrator, is left to deal with the consequent shame and guilt that accompanies it. The short film invokes the same sentiment as one of its primary preoccupations without explicitly spelling out any of it. This also goes to become one of the most notable elements of the narrative - conjuring several moments of poignancy, urgently demanding viewer's complete absorption with the events unfolding before them, without truly naming anything. 


The narrative is marked by an economy of words, allowing the performance by Melisa Alkanlar, notable in its vulnerability, to bring to life on screen the unease and discomfort of past trauma. Amidst it all, however, there is also an important message about acceptance and the difficult, obstacle-ridden road that leads to it. 

The permanence of such an ordeal, especially when experienced at a young age, can continue to scar and cripple one for years to come, making the achievement of the acceptance that it was not your fault, even more evasive and insurmountable. A path requiring immense courage, it is however the only one that can eventually lead to closure, reminds the narrative. As for the protagonist, who finds herself consumed by her past to the point of it affecting her school grades and day-to-day life and experiences, will she finally succeed in reaching this destination?

Dion | Short Film of the Day

A woman is excited to finally meet a man she has admired and adored for a long time. However, despite the air of excitement and cheer, the viewer can sense a suggestion of something dark brewing right under the surface. As the date commences, the woman arrives to meet a man several years her senior. Despite an initial, brief unease, the night continues to develop seamlessly. 

Though the narrative hints at unsavoury aspects in the past of both characters, they are never taken all the way or located more significantly within the narrative. What unfolds eventually is a story of clearly violated consent, and sexual assault, unlike what the title may have suggested at first glance.

The end result is sincere in sharing its intentions, and presents a glimpse of the storytelling skills of its predominantly young team.

Blurred Lines | Short Film Nominee

The story of the film opens on a note which is quite opposite to the direction it is headed in. The several layers of the narrative, the secrets hidden in the shadows and the tension simmering just below the surface are revealed in a manner that demands the viewer's full attention, compelling them to participate in the story deeply. Without giving away the big reveal at the climax, a near-impossible task, one can only talk about the emotions it invokes - from a heightened sense of tension to guilt and regret. Of course it's the viewer's choice regarding where they locate themselves on this spectrum of emotions, while a man hides from an unsuspecting woman whose house he's perhaps broken into. The woman, with an other-worldly, almost elven quality to her movements and body language, puts the viewer at unease the moment she begins a conversation with her imagined listener, an older brother. The film wants to conjure an involving narrative that ropes in the idea of the normative familial space as well as what its distortion or flight from the ordinary could potentially mean for the members who constitute it. The dimly lit frames are conceivably supposed to be an echo of the darkness of the characters' mind as well as that of the acts they have or are about to commit. However, despite that, a better control on the lighting would have benefited the film, allowing it to be more than what it already is.

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