Making film for the right reasons
The Young Director Awards reminds us why great film matters - new talents tackle social issues with style, humour and humanity.
The world is in crisis, but these six short films picked from the winners of the Young Director Awards last year are a timely reminder that the future of film is in good hands.
Sometimes it’s good to get a short, sharp shock of a reminder as to why you joined the industry you work in in the first place - and what made you stick it out.
The best of the Young Director Award winners was that reminder for me…
Sitting in the cool dark cinema for roughly three hours was a welcome respite from the glaring heat and noise outside in Cannes in June, where the screening took place. And clutching my HALAL branded paper box of popcorn, I experienced the sort of euphoria, escapism and emotion that only film in its most visceral form can deliver.
Almost everything I saw was exceptional, but these six films moved me in mysterious ways - as I think they will you.
Representing a huge range of topics, genres and formats, the films address complex social issues employing highly unusual styles – often surreal, but always with a human touch.
So do yourself a favour and make some time to watch these magnificent films.
They’re a thankful reminder that, despite the current dark clouds and chaos, the future of filmmaking is in good hands.
FAMILY directed by Sebastian Hill-Esbrand, Canada
The depth and scale of Sebastian Hill-Esbrand’s Family is remarkable for its six-minute runtime. A film rendition of the harrowing real life story of its (anonymous) narrator, the film builds imaginatively around its central voiceover with a mixture of surreal art direction, highly kinetic cinematography and performances that authentically reconstruct a life defined by addiction and deprivation.
We follow the journey of the narrator from his impoverished childhood, gang life and then post-gang
A gang initiation feels phantasmagorical with its carnivalesque masks. There’s a neat visual metaphor for heroin addiction worthy of Michel Gondry. And the loss of a loved one returns throughout with flashbacks - and fast forwards - with a fantastical sharpness that’s true to trauma. By the end of the short, you feel as if you’ve been riding along with the narrator for a lifetime – though a hopeful ending suggests a light at the end of the tunnel. Moving as all hell, and flawlessly realised and art directed. You feel like you’re looking at real life.
POINT AND KILL directed by Ebenza Blanche, UK
Ebeneza Blanche’s music video for Little Simz and Obongjayar’s ‘Point & Kill’ is everything I love about this medium - I still believe that a great music video is the ultimate experience and form for storytelling.
It’s all at once a deft social commentary, a magical realist portrait of a Nigerian town, and a series of comical and stylish vignettes. Simz returned to Lagos for the first time since her childhood to shoot with Blanche, who depicts a Nigeria at once culturally vigorous and awash with police brutality. From the back of her motorcycle, we look with Simz’s eyes as she encounters a series of increasingly surreal scenes, each laid out perfectly in an almost painterly fashion – concluding with an ingeniously protracted slow-motion tableau for the song’s coda. All in all, it manages to mesh style, visuals and meaning seamlessly in a way that does justice to a truly great track. It’s a style that’s often replicated and very easy to get wrong - but in Blanche’s capable hands, it feels fresh and masterful.
HOW TO BE A PERSON - HOW TO GET AN ABORTION
by Sindha Agha, UK
Don’t be fooled by the name. How to Be a Person - How to Get an Abortion from Sindha Agha is a much easier watch than the topic suggests. With humour desperately needed during the continuing struggle for reproductive rights, Agha’s film is a frank, light-hearted take on a phenomenon as much in need of normalising as in taking it seriously. It does so through the story of Sanam, whose abortion comes about in ways that are both universal to teenagers and coloured with playful touches of specifically British Pakistani culture. Maya Torres makes Sanam immensely likeable with some perfectly executed facial expressions (including a priceless reaction to a particularly phallic kebab) and a winning voiceover. It helps that Agha’s script (co-written with Samira Mian) packs wit and pathos into probably the funniest film ever about abortion.
CATS AND DOGS by Joost Biesheuvel, Netherlands
For video art, Joost Biesheuvel’s short Cats and Dogs is highly narrative and disarming in its lucid simplicity. ‘A poetic fairytale’, as it’s subtitled, the film centres around a fable-like love story between a woman and man who meet at a ball – masked as cat and dog, respectively. The refrain “I’m a cat, and you’re a dog” repeats through concise stanzas on feline-canine relations, made very neatly allegorical to the fairytale romance shown on screen. These storybook-coloured scenes could turn kitschy in other hands, but the bold cinematography, delicate score and precise pacing make this a neat, evocative piece of ornamentation that gestures towards something deeper.
SPOTLESS by Emma Branderhorst, Netherlands
This highly affecting short from Emma Branderhorst paints a stark picture of period poverty in the Netherlands. Alicia Prinsen gives an extraordinary performance as Ruby, a teenage girl forced to face the repercussions of her single-parent family being unable to afford tampons. Very much a message film, it holds no punches when it comes to showing how this compounds the everyday humiliations of women’s adolescence and how the burden of poverty demands untimely bravery from young people affected. Yet, despite being a vigorous social commentary, the film confronts the topic with the delicacy and authenticity of a Ken Loach feature. Thanks to this grit and compassion, Spotless is a remarkable achievement as a piece of both impactful messaging and genuine storytelling.
SUPER.HUMAN by Bradford Young, UK
The only advert to make my cut, this sharp film for Channel 4’s pioneering coverage of the (postponed) 2020 Paralympic Games made waves, thanks to superb direction from Oscar-nominated cinematographer Bradford Young. Emphasising the ‘human’ in superhuman, it captures (sometimes quite literally) the blood, sweat and tears these athletes put into preparing for the games, as well as their daily struggles – both specific to having certain disabilities and to being messy, imperfect human beings. Edited in a rapidfire style with super-kinetic cinematography and plenty of witty match cuts, there are hefty doses of humour and pathos. And it’s that potent combination that totally does away with the kind of condescending sympathy usually afforded to people with disabilities – regardless of whether they struggle through them to become world champions. Stirring stuff, presented through a bold and unusual lens.
