Trying for the Trifecta

📅 This Week on Short of the Week

***

Cecilia Delgado has been a mainstay of the New York shorts scene and Céline found much to admire in her directorial debut which is “…interested in exploring how one’s biological clock ticking pairs with a queer identity.” Buoyed by performances from the incomparable Eleanore Pienta and Anamari Mesa as the central couple, the film accomplishes the difficult trick of letting the audience experience Sofia’s chaotic and confused interiority as she embarks on her seemingly illogical path.

***

Céline also takes on the review for this film from Haaris Qadri, which takes on the typical pressures that immigrant kids experience and piles on the responsibility of parent caretaking. The child of immigrants, growing up in Canada, Qadri incorporates some of himself into the story, but more so the experiences of his sister, as, in an economical 4 scenes, he movingly paints the lasting changes within a parent/child relationship.

***

On Thursday we released our spotlight on the three films that were the S/W Programming team’s favorite releases of the month. I’m hesitant to confess it, but the truth is that I don’t even always manage to watch every release that hits Short of the Week, so even I find these roundups to be useful for catching up on what’s essential. Congrats to Douwe, Femi, and Victoria for making the grade.

🔮 Making Predictions…

Oscar voting has closed and only a select few accountants know who will be receiving shiny good statuettes a week from Sunday. Undeterred, I and my S/W compatriots couldn’t resist getting our official predictions out in a piece on S/W today.

For those of you partaking in Oscar betting pools, we’ll have you know that our track record is pretty good! You have to take our word for it though, as we only started publicly releasing our picks last year. Still, we went 2 for 3, and think we can nail the trifecta this time out. What are our picks? I complicate the case for Wes Anderson’s Live-Action favorite, The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar (excerpted below), so you’ll have to read the full piece to find out! Also, snobs that we are, we’ve added what we would award in each category if it was up to us.

🪐 Shortverse Collections

Best of the Month: February ‘24

10 films make the list in this popular spin-off of S/W’s Best of the Month, which sees our curatorial team sift through new releases on Shortverse. It’s a diverse spread, with style-heavy docs sitting alongside spooky thrillers, and even a meta-comedy about the inherent ridiculousness of making a short film! Discover the bunch by clicking the button below.

It took a day longer than it usually does, but the calendar ticking over to March means that Kickstarter’s Long Story Short promotion has begun!

We’ve written in-depth about the initiative in the past, but if you want to know what this is about, let’s hear it straight from the company’s Senior Director of Film, Elise McCave, in a blog post from earlier in the year:

It’s still not too late to participate if you have a short film you’re thinking about crowdfunding. All you need to do is create a short film project on Kickstarter and select “Shorts” as your subcategory, then launch your project anytime between March 1 and 31, 2024.

Otherwise, be like me—I frequently cruise the site in March to discover interesting projects to contribute (modestly!) to. Last year my favorite project I contributed to was Grace from Natalie Harris which went on to premiere at Sundance a few weeks ago!

🎟 Coming soon that we’re excited about…

As we often do, we’ll close out this week’s newsletter with a recommendation for a soon-to-release short. This time out we highlight Matt Houghton and Georgie Wileman’s uniquely intimate, quasi-experimental documentary, This is Endometriosis, which documents Wileman’s years-long struggle with the poorly understood disorder. The film played Hot Docs and is set to arrive on Shortverse on March 7th.