NARRATIVE SHORTS
SCREENING
Thursday 22 June – 14.00
GOOD GRIEF
(UK)
SYNOPSIS
Four mothers, from different walks of life, are united in sorrow by the sudden loss of their children. After coming face-to-face with the vast emptiness of their despair, they must make a choice: whether to give in to the agony, or fight to rebuild their lives. Or will a third option present itself, when they learn the importance and true meaning of grief?
Writer/Director: Robert Sharp
Producer: Sophie Black
Cast: Vicky McClure, Abigail Pidgeon, Bethany Asher, Mercedes Assad, Solaya Sang
MEET THE DIRECTOR
JBtec in media 1992-95
Bathroom fitter 1997 – present
Positive midlife crisis 2018
Some Lines – zero budget short 2019
Good Grief – 1st professional film 2021
(waiting 25 years to fulfill your dreams is definitely worth it 😊)
THE BODY WITH NO FACE
(UK)
SYNOPSIS
A woman with a passion for nature loses the life she knew when she finds herself living with a chronic illness, bedbound in the dark and unable to speak, in a room in a care home. While striving to hold on to a tiny, fragile fragment of her former life, her safe space is invaded by a sequence of mysterious intruders, who silently take away her precious possessions, one by one, stripping her environment of all she holds dear. As the intruders become more and more faceless and dehumanised, and her losses more critical, she faces her biggest threat of all – can she hold on to her own humanity?
Commissioned with the BBC New Creatives talent development scheme, the film was under exclusivity with the BBC until October 2022. Due to delays (pandemic and illness-related), it wasn’t broadcast alongside the films within its cohort and we are now excited for a film festival premiere.
Writer: April E Hook
Director: Owen Tooth
Producer: Emmeline Hartley
MEET THE DIRECTOR
Owen‘s films have won awards at festivals around the globe and his debut feature received a worldwide release. Total Film declared one of Owen’s shorts ‘one of the five scariest shorts online’ and another was selected for inclusion on the Paranormal Activity UK release. Last summer, he won Best Micro Short Comedy at the Berlin Flash Film Festival, Best International Director at the Austin Microfilm festival and directed a BBC New Creatives short. As a wheelchair user and ally, he is keen to champion change in the industry
CHILDREN OF WILD ORCHID
(Iran)
SYNOPSIS
A very young girl, who is joyous despite her being a victim of child labor, faces the darker realities of her life while she tries her best to touch its beauties when encountering them.
Writer/Director:/Producer: Farshad Mohammadi
Producer: Karen Newman
Cast: Hossein Balouch, Khanzadi Balouch, Arezoo Taj Nia, Keyvan Parmar
MEET THE DIRECTOR
Farshad Mohammadi (1972) is an Iranian cinematographer. For years, he has worked as a DOP in over 30 major Iranian features and has worked with a number of high-profile Iranian directors, including Bahman Farmanara, Bahram Beizai, Masoud Kimiyaee, Ebrahim Hatamikia, Kamal Tabrizi, Hamid Nematollah, Abolhassan Davoodi, and Ida Panahandeh. He has won a number of awards as a cinematographer, including the Crystal Simorgh for the best technical-artistic achievement from the 31st Fajr Film Festival, the best cinematography award from the 3rd Iranian Film Festival in Toronto, and the best cinematography award from the 2020 edition of Sepanta Awards in San Francisco. The short film, Children of Wild Orchid, is Farshad Mohammadi’s first experience as both a filmmaker and a cinematographer.
CHIMERA
(USA)
SYNOPSIS
Set in a not too distant future small town, a VR life simulation junkie goes on a mission in reality to get a new dopamine game cartridge before she goes through happiness withdrawal.
Writer/Director/Producer: Andrew Lee Ryan
Cast: Terra Layne, Chérie Celeste Malone, Joshua Radford, Connor Dylan, Ahmad DeChalus
MEET THE DIRECTOR
I have a passion for telling stories that question the status quo with themes that resonate. I enjoy entertaining an audience with high concept cinema. I write about the present by contemplating the past, anticipating a possible future or adding some strange twist to our current reality. I believe that storytelling should be used to entertain, but also to inspire curiosity about the world we live in today…and hopefully change it for the better.
My ultimate goal is to be part of ushering in an era of thought-provoking character driven adult blockbusters. Some of my mentors (unbeknownst to them) are Bong Joon-ho, Christopher Nolan, Denis Villeneuve, Jordan Peele, David Fincher and Matt Reeves.
PARIS-BRUXELLES
(France)
SYNOPSIS
Paris-Bruxelles is a road-movie that begins as a regular holiday. But an irregular adventure awaits. Today, the family is driving towards Belgium for the assisted suicide of Blanche, the grandmother.
Writer/Director: Marjorie Lhomme
Producer: Véronique Siegel, Patrick Hernandez, Delphine Duez, Valentin Leblanc
Cast: Gaëlle Billaut-Danno, Diane Hernandez, Maryne Bertieaux, Schemci Lauth Lauth
MEET THE DIRECTOR
Marjorie Lhomme trained at the Conservatoire de Metz and at Les Enfants Terribles in Paris. She has acted in some twenty plays and short and medium-length films. She directed Lysistrata by Aristophanes, Independence by Lee Blessing and directed clips and videos for SIXTY EIGHT, Marie Milla, DELAURENTIS as well as for her musical project MARGAUX HERMAN for which she is a singer, songwriter and melodist. She wrote and directed the short films Les épicuriens in 2014 and Au-dessus du monde in 2017. In 2022, she directed Paris-Brussels, a road movie about the right to die with dignity and transmission.
NASA, Merthyr Tydfil
(UK)
SYNOPSIS
A spaceman returns to their Nanna’s home in the valleys of South Wales. This is a tender, humourous exploration of home, longing, and the working class family belief that to ‘succeed’ is to travel as far from your origin as possible.
Writer/Director/Producer: Kit Griffiths
Cast: Kit Griffiths, Pat Lewis
MEET THE DIRECTOR
Kit Griffiths is a multimedia artist whose current project ‘Delusions of Grandma’ is a collection of redemptive family portraits across poetry, film, painting and live performance. “In queer culture we often leave our birth families in search of safety and space to flourish, but I’ve realised that when someone is dead to you, you carry their dead weight. So I’m choosing my birth family. I’m committing my time, energy and money to forging new present moments, fusing them with nuggets of the past.”
THE EXCHANGE
(Israel)
SYNOPSIS
Yonatan is asked to come see his grandmother on her deathbed with his judgmental older brother. On their nightly train ride the two siblings turn against each other, as the looming encounter with death threatens to tear down Yonatan’s walls of apathy.
Writer/Director/Producer: Nimrod Raif
Writer: Omer Sheinfeld
Producer: Ben Michaeli
Cast: Yoni Green, Tom Appelbaum, Maya Rothschild
MEET THE DIRECTOR
Nimrod Raif (born 1989) is a director and writer living and working in Tel-Aviv, Israel. He graduated from The Steve Tisch School of Film and Television at Tel Aviv University. His films tackle issues such as brotherhood, generational differences, and the quest to create an identity. Relying heavily on cinematic language, Raif draws from his own past to express complex memories, aiming for a deeper understanding of human nature.
HAROLD & MARY
(UK)
SYNOPSIS
As a disease takes hold, Harold and Mary are forced to re-assess the journey of their relationship; challenging their love, patience and perseverance after fifty years of marriage.
Writer/Director: Stephen Gallacher
Producer: Jake Cullen
Cast: Dermot Crowley, Phyllis Logan, Maddie Rice, Simon Manyonda
MEET THE DIRECTOR
My name is Stephen, I am a seasider, born and raised in Blackpool. I come from a hard-working mining family who moved from Yorkshire over the border to Lancashire. My mum is a teacher, and my dad works in IT.
I didn’t have any access to the film industry growing up so I spent a lot of time on stage acting in amateur dramatics, working on my LAMDA examinations, and taking out my dads’ camcorder to shoot skateboarding videos with my friends and testing out techniques I had seen in films to see if I could recreate them.
I attended York St. John University where I made some incredible friends and we set out on our filmmaking journey together. Once we graduated, we made a few low budget shorts and one very low budget feature (£2k), and then decided it was time to join the rat race down in London. My friend got a job working at a rental house and I quickly followed, sleeping on his floor while doing work experience on Downton Abbey.
Filmmaking is all I have ever wanted to do, and to be part of this industry is something I have to pinch myself about every day. Coming from a working-class northern family I never expected I could be where I am now. My aspiration of directing films and TV series is the final step to achieving all I have set out to do.
NEXTING
(Greece)
SYNOPSIS
Lexi has glossed over life without deep commitments or attachments. She joins the online dating world as a fun and easy way to meet people and spend her few nights in town. But what appears to be an exciting journey, soon becomes a draining loop. “Nexting” explores human connection, relationships, timing or rather the lack of the above as well as the question of how present we can actually be when we are constantly thinking about what better is hiding around the corner.
Director: Karina Logotheti
Writer: Ioanna Triantafilidou
Producer: Mando Stathi
Cast: Ioanna Triantafilidou
MEET THE DIRECTOR
Born in the States, grew up in Greece, spent a year in France and currently living in Los Angeles, Karina belongs everywhere. Having a hard time expressing herself using words, she uses the power of images. Moving or still, it doesn’t matter. Being a worshiper of kitsch & surrealism, she finds delightfulness in ugliness and awkwardness. After her studies in Photography and Filmmaking, she started working in the film industry as a writer, director & script supervisor. At the moment she practices her love towards fashion photography and who knows what will come next.