2025 - a year in film

Alison is a well-made and nicely drawn portrait of a dysfunctional relationship. The ending might be a bit over-the-top, as the film works better when it's more ambiguous and subtextual. This choice was likely due to the short film format, necessitating a punctuation mark to the otherwise freeform, natural storytelling that precedes it. Nonetheless, the short film zips by on the chemistry of the leads and the peppy, lived-in dialogue.

Sombre and chatty, Frozen Marbles is a well-made, if familiar, two-hander short film. The topic is well-worn but rendered here with colloquial, lived-in, and engaging dialogue, as well as bright, likeable performances.

Be My Guest has a compelling central conceit: a couple experiments with a controversial mind-transfer technology to solve their financial problems by renting out the boyfriend’s body to paying customers. Although the film is tight and tense, this material could be handled better. We join the couple at breaking point and, possibly due to the short film format, we don’t get enough of a sense of them to really invest in the duplicity of the ending reveal. The world-building is intriguing, and the tech is convincing enough with nicely drawn real-world parallels. A deeper exploration of the relationship would have led to a more thorough examination of the ethical and moral dilemmas hovering over the film. As it stands, Be My Guest is a satisfying but slightly underwhelming experience.

7.8

Amusing, effective, and affecting, A Real Pain is the very definition of a dramedy. Much like his first film, When You Finish Saving the World, Eisenberg paints a portrait of complicated and mostly unlikeable characters who, through their overwrought dynamic, become understandable and relatable. Charting the highs and lows of cousins on a trip to Poland in memory of their recently deceased Holocaust-surviving grandma, A Real Pain is a two-handed character study, examining the varied ways people experience and process grief, trauma and loss.

Kieran Culkin is seemingly breezy, charming and uncaring but he experiences waves of anger, lashing out and feeling deeply. Jesse Eisenberg is more stoic, funneling himself into his meaningless day job and idyllic family. The two characters merge and diverge throughout the picture, together creating a charming and satisfying depiction of a family dynamic and history rather than separate characters. This is earnest and sad but also littered with uncomfortable laughs and witty asides.

Culkin encapsulates the film's different tones perfectly. He says the wrong thing at the right time and the right thing at the wrong time; he is both charming and annoying, singular and relatable, obnoxious and sensitive. Emotionally anchoring the piece, Eisenberg does brilliant work, particularly when he breaks from his neurotic, Woody Allen schtick. He delivers a lived-in, heartbreaking monologue that is simple and brutal in its effectiveness. A love letter to history, trauma, and ancestry, Eisenberg's film stands out for its tonal assuredness and his command of the potentially tricky material. Confidently directed and sensitively written, A Real Pain is difficult to watch at times, but it's well worth the trip.

Uncomfortable, well-made, and darkly comedic, Positive Reinforcement is a brilliant fit for short-form cinema, built on a neat and clever idea. The film externalises internal struggles in often brutal and uncompromising ways. Gustavo T. Astudillo transforms the battle with oneself into an engaging, if somewhat bitter, experience.

7.7

Exhausting, unapologetic, amusing, and effective, Sean Baker's Anora is a wildly enjoyable and prickly character study. Despite the pulpy plotting, setting, and over-the-top screwball antics, Anora is a sensitive portrait of a complicated and fractious character.

Baker is famed for his insightful, empathetic meditations on life on the fringes, and much like The Florida Project, Anora showcases the resilience and fortitude of "normal" or marginalised folk. Baker yet again explores the lives of sex workers, focusing on Anora, who marries the son of a wealthy Russian family.

It's an interesting world, not unfamiliar cinematically, but Baker sidesteps all of the pulpy generic tropes, choosing an amusing matter-of-fact tone and frantic style more akin to a funnier Safdie brothers-type movie. The film is less focused on the mechanics of its plot than on building and layering its characters.

Baker's insistence on cutting back to Mikey Madison's Anora at choice moments in the midst of the shouty chaos is really effective. These small moments give the audience a sense of her emotional depth and peel back some of the prickly surface layers of her character. The same is true with Yura Borisov as Igor, who, through similar small moments, becomes a vital cog in the machine rather than the blunt instrument he is introduced as.

The central relationship is an interesting one that grows from transactional to something more nuanced. While it is still grounded in money and Anora's desire to escape her difficult life, they begin to impact each other, too. Mark Eydelshteyn as Vanya Zakharov is good; his odd delivery and easy screen presence fit the character. He is equally effective as an icky childish wannabe and male ingenue who has no agency despite his moneyed and seemingly carefree life in America.

Their connection deepens, making it harder to see who is playing whom and who is using whom. This gives way to some silly hijinks, highlighting Baker's ability to switch modes and tones. Madison does a lot of the heavy lifting here, grounding the escalating silliness with her spiky allure and sympathetic performance.

Typically multidimensional and engaging, Anora is Baker's most fun and accessible project, balancing emotion and charm, darkness and humour, and silliness with depth.

6.8

Well-made, playful, rich, and thematically interesting, Alice Rohrwacher's La Chimera possesses all the hallmarks of a pulpy adventure movie but opts for a more pensive, sensitive, and poetic feel. With beautiful photography, metaphor, and a Greek chorus of sorts punctuating the narrative, La Chimera is a beguiling watch.

Josh O'Connor plays Arthur, a man with a talent for finding priceless artefacts, whose gift often feels more like a curse. Haunted by a lost love, Arthur is entangled in a web of colourful characters, criminality, and the pursuit of impossible dreams. Everyone is chasing their own chimera. Italia (Carol Duarte) serves as the film's emotional core with her desire to break free from the traditional and stifling life of a student and caretaker for Flora (Isabella Rossellini).

Italia lives a lie. Forced to hide her children, who were presumably born out of wedlock, from her employer Flora, Italia at first seems meek and mild. She is learning to sing but is made a skivvy by the Mrs Havisham-esque Flora. Italia worries that Flora's disapproval of her past life might lead to severe consequences for her family. She longs for freedom for herself and her children, aiming to give them a future not spent in hiding or in bondage, symbolising a broader desire for liberation and progress in a post-industrial Italian society. Set in the 1980s, La Chimera captures the changing social attitudes of the time, mirroring Italia's personal journey towards emancipation.

Arthur mines graves and commodifies the past in his pursuit of what he has lost; seemingly uninterested in the money and material gains coveted by the rest of his gang. His deceased girlfriend, Beniamina, looms over the film as a constant but elusive presence; each priceless artefact is a shattered piece of her memory. It’s a testament to the storytelling that such a character, even in her absence, can have such a powerful impact on the narrative. Throughout the film, Arthur exists in a strange, dreamlike, Fellini-esque half-space between the land of the living and the dead. Arthur's arc is simple enough, even though his character is a complicated and strange presence, and the ending is well-handled, enigmatic, and bittersweet, much like the film itself.

Some might be put off by the pacing and the often cold or aloof stylings, but there is a lot to be found under the surface and much beauty to be discovered by those willing to piece it together.

Sensitive and well-made, Eivind Landsvik captures the isolation and loneliness of burgeoning adulthood through a series of dreamily edited and woozy short episodes of Sofia's summer. Reminiscent of the excellent The Cathedral, Sofia, Last Summer is peppered with odd, realistic POV shots and naturalistic lighting contrasts, imbuing the short with an immersive and strangely charming realism and nostalgic quality.

Messy, dour, uncinematic, and ugly.

Emotionally intelligent and beautifully rendered, this short drama has a strong central idea. When Maude, played by Salomé Richard, loses her hearing, it underscores the increasing distance and communication breakdown between her and her lover, Clothilde. It's a simple concept, but one that is effectively and cinematically communicated through careful sound editing and clean, cool cinematography.

A playful, if slightly obnoxious, companion piece to Des Bagnoles Et Des Arbres, She’s the Protagonist is less cerebral but more cutting in its dissection of the complicated world of women on film. Belligerent in its visual takedowns of tropes and acerbically scripted, She’s the Protagonist is fun, "important," and pointed but ultimately a rather frivolous short film.

Intriguing and engaging, Alice Fargier's The Time of a Night is a well-made and bittersweet short film drama. The subtle storytelling is anchored by a fine and spirited performance from Salomé Richard as the complicated and mysterious Nora. The dynamics are good, and none of this feels like too much of a stretch, due in part to the film's considered pacing. The ending grace notes are equal parts sad and hopeful, and even if this doesn't quite all hold together, it's a worthwhile and lived-in snapshot of an interesting point in time.

Conceptually and visually interesting, this film is perhaps too heightened, quirky, and awkwardly played to be much more than a mildly successful short film curio. Concerning a photographer who starts to have trouble with her sight, TJ Misny asks his audience to consider the suffering all around us that we see but choose to ignore. Seemingly healthy, she is told that her problem is psychological, and when asked when she last cried, she can't remember. The photographer, played by Ariane Labed, tries to truly engage and feel but only seems to irritate and alienate those around her with her matter-of-factness and lack of empathy. Ariane Labed has great presence and perfectly suits the idea of the film; she captures pain and suffering through her lens but can't feel it. We all separate, narrativise, and disassociate from the harshness around us, but to what end? She understands the need to feel but can't; it has become an abstraction due to her need to commodify and conceptualise the world around her. There's a lot to be explored here, and 18 minutes doesn't really begin to scratch the surface. Hence, the film tries to wrap this up in a strange and panto-like tone, rather than engaging with its themes.

Sombre, engaging, and intimate, I Don’t Want to Forget Anything is a poignant and understated Greek short drama about loss and memory. Taking place over the phone, two sisters remember their mother; one is on her way to the funeral while the other, for an unknown reason, is trapped at home, wracked with guilt and grief. It's a simple idea, and one that is well-travelled, but it's well done, capturing the isolation of grief.

Effective in spite of some intrusive and melodramatic music choices, The Interview is an interesting and engaging Russian short film. Sonya, a journalism student, decides to frame her master's thesis around the works of her estranged children's author father, whom she decides to interview as the final piece. There's some neat writing here, with the interview itself unfolding in dual lingo, as the two talk past each other; trying to ignore the obvious; hiding behind stories and words. The central performance from Liza Epatyevskaya is understated and convincing as Sonya, though her big moment on screen is somewhat marred by the over-dramatic and completely unnecessary music.

6.7

Earnest and character-driven, Compartment No. 6 is beautifully shot and well-observed. Some might be put off by the looseness of the plot or the relatively slow pacing, but the focus here is on the unfolding characterisations rather than plot machinations. Laura (Seidi Haarla) is on a trip to see the petroglyphs. She is on her own, as her relationship with a charismatic socialite professor is withering. Reeling from the inevitable break-up and being left alone, Laura meets the brash and childlike Lyokha (Yura Borisov) in Compartment No. 6. Sharing the close quarters is tough at first, but Lyokha is as surprising as he is rough and crude, and Laura relaxes into his oddly charismatic presence. Not as immediate as Before Sunrise, Compartment No. 6 is pensive and often cold. There's an interesting interplay between the stark Russian winter and the burgeoning warmth of the central relationship. Some might find the ending frustrating, as there's no grand reveal of the object of Laura's trip or sealing of the relationship, but I think that's precisely the point. The trip was supposed to be with the professor and therefore represents that part of Laura's life—a part that Laura has resigned to the past by the end of the picture. Similarly, Laura is now open to pursue whatever she wishes, free of the burden of her toxic relationship, which includes Lyokha.

Creative and offbeat, Pablo Hernando's Solar Noise feels like a quirky cousin to the classic La Jetée, but with an even stranger and bolder tone. Hernando masterfully blends the absurd with the poetic, and the prophetic with the horrific. It's an intriguing and engaging sci-fi short film that revolves around various accounts of a strange solar event causing the world to glimpse into the future. Some people see more than others—some envision future wars, while others witness abstract visions—but everyone is irrevocably changed by what they glimpse. Story highlights include Ingrid García Jonsson's tale of a world in which TV and movies are projected directly into the brain and how that negatively affects her cognition. The other is the final tale, the story of a man whose vision is of a soldier who sets him a harrowing task in the future. The man, wracked with guilt, devotes the rest of his life to training for the inevitable; building up to this one moment, only to have the rug pulled from under him. It's an ending that leaves a lasting impression.

How To Be Alone is a fun horror short. Kate Trefry directs this offbeat tale about a woman who has to confront her deepest, innermost fears when her boyfriend leaves for a night shift. Tackling heady themes of isolation and loneliness, mental health, and substance abuse, Trefry keeps this fresh and fun, notably through the use of an inner monologue voiceover which juxtaposes some of the more troubling visual work. There are nice thematic underpinnings that elevate this above the usual "is she/isn't she" horror fare, and some of the visuals are quite memorable.

6.8

Naturalistic, involved, and engaging, Fidelio: Alice’s Odyssey is a well-made and complex story of the push and pull of freedom, desire, responsibility, and love. More intricate than a traditional love triangle movie, Fidelio tells the tale of Alice, who is torn between the freedom of her professional life at sea and the confines of normalcy with her boyfriend and family on land. Lucie Borleteau clearly has a lot on her mind here; this feels personal and lived-in. Borleteau handles this with ambiguity and restraint, letting her characters breathe. In lesser hands, this could've been melodramatic and saccharine, but here it's believable despite its slightly clichéd and obvious setup.

Ariane Labed is great as Alice. Alice is not a sympathetic character, nor is she especially likeable, but Labed lends Alice an understanding. Coupled with the writing, Labed presents Alice in a matter-of-fact, take-it-or-leave-it kind of way. She isn't arrogant or obnoxious about her decisions, nor is she a doting ingénue. Alice feels realistic and messy—awash with contradictions and internal conflict. What her job represents to her is multifaceted; it represents personal freedom, nostalgia, her first love (both literally, the sea, engineering and in terms of Gaël, the dapper captain), and a blossoming career.

We all make sacrifices in pursuit of dreams, and it is hard to quantify and contextualise these sacrifices. Self-discovery is as much about learning how others see us as it is about learning to see ourselves. Alice's decisions throughout the movie change and mould the world around her, and her relationship with Felix, in particular, holds a mirror up to Alice. Played by Anders Danielsen Lie, Felix is the audience-proxy of the film. He is loyal—waiting for Alice, supporting Alice, loving Alice—and even in the face of everything, giving her a chance at the end of the picture.

There is a universal truth here, even if it is hard to put your finger on it. The standoffs and trade-offs between personal and professional life are something everyone has to deal with. Admittedly, most of us never experience it quite like this, but cinema exists to highlight by accentuating and augmenting reality, not just merely reflecting it.

6.4

Messy, naturalistic, and uncomfortable, Name Me is a prickly Russian drama about identity and family. Olya and Sasha travel to Crimea hoping to reconnect with Olya's estranged father. Nervous about the meeting, Olya can't quite build up the requisite courage to go in, so the duo hatch a plan to swap identities, taking the burden off Olya. Sasha is free-spirited and wild, the complete opposite of studious and restrained Olya. The plan seems to work initially as the pair ingratiate themselves into the quiet and simple life of Sergey. What unfolds is a complicated and dynamic examination of the need for validation and the yearning for affection in all its forms.

Sasha grew up without a father figure and is clearly confused when it comes to affection and love. She often defaults to using her looks as a means to gain validation and attention, a dangerous game when it comes to her shadowy, duplicitous relationship with Sergey. Despite the lack of her 'real' father's involvement in her life, Olya's mother remarried, and her home life was more stable, making Olya more emotionally intelligent. Sasha eats up the attention, while Olya sits on the periphery of conversations, like a ghost of the past. Sergey's life is turned upside down by the girls' arrival, with Sasha's playfulness and sexuality proving irksome and troubling in various ways. Sasha gets drunk and finds a boyfriend, and Sergey struggles to navigate his new role as a parent. He feels responsible, as he should, but doesn't have the tools or the vocabulary to deal with her wayward behaviour. He wishes Sasha were more like Olya, which is obviously the truth of the situation.

Sasha has power over men, and she knows it, but this power is fragile and weighted, even though she doesn't realise it. It's not a meaningful connection, it's frivolity, titillation, and sex. Olya longs to find some kind of deeper connection, some kind of meaning from Sergey and his life but can't. Sergey is painted as abit of a brute, he is old-school and harsh. He knows nothing of the Moscow big city life, and doesn't seem to care. One night in a drunken stupor, Sergey says that his relationship with Olya's mother was literally just a roll on the beach. Olya is obviously broken by this, and this schism leads to a troubling series of events and the eventual revealing of the truth. The duo swap roles, and their identities become intermingled, confused and malleable. Olya has an affair with Sasha's new boyfriend and goes out partying, taking drugs, and being wild. Meanwhile, Sasha bonds with her 'father' on an illegal fishing trip—she finally feels a part of something, learns the value of a father figure (however small the moment is), and peeks behind the sex-kitten curtain she has shrouded her life in. Jealous, hungover, guilty and hurt, Olya reveals the truth to Sergey, and the fallout changes the girls' relationship irrevocably.

Much like Nigina Sayfullaeva’s more recent film Fidelity, there's a cold, hands-off realism to Name Me, typified by a matter-of-fact and meandering quality to the storytelling and cinematography. Tension is built well, and characters are richly drawn using subtle gestures and quiet moments. It's a shame that the film ends on a whimper. It simmers and boils and then just fizzles out. We don't get a satisfying psychological assessment of the girls at the end of the picture, something that belies some of the interesting character work before the ending. There are a few narrative loose ends and ambiguities that might be okay in a less specific and involved picture, but here they feel itchy and annoying. Much like with Fidelity, the audience is often unseated by the troubling character and narrative developments, and that is fine, but I'm not sure this quite comes together at the end. We know that the duo have changed, and maybe that is enough, but more care is needed to crown this morally complicated story and ground it with relatability and universal truth.