Last week S/W founder Jason Sondhi met up with site contributor and Toronto-resident, Céline Roustan, to bask in the glory of North America’s most hi-profile film festival. The duo scouted the shorts programs and was able to catch up with several S/W alums who had features playing. Here are the pair’s highlights. Hopefully you’ll be able to see these features in theaters soon, and we’ll be working to get many of these shorts on the site in the months ahead!

Shorts

Pre-Drink

Marc-Antoine Lemire

Awarded Best Canadian Short Film, Pre-Drink is the story of Alexe, a transwoman, and Carl, her best friend who start the night pre-gaming. As drinks are being poured, the strength of their friendship gets tested and boundaries are pushed when they decide to have sex. Pascale Devillon and Alex Trahan deliver raw and honest performances that carry the film.

Bonboné

Dir: Rakan Mayasi

A Palestinian couple has to get creative to conceive as the husband is behind bars in an Israeli prison. Rakan Mayasi’s dark comedy, one of our favorites from the short cuts program, mixes great and funny writing with steamy chemistry between Raya Meddine and Saleh Bakri and delivers a highly entertaining short film.

The Tesla World Light

Dir: Matthew Rankin 

Matthew Rankin, previously featured on S/W for Mynarski Death Plummet, is perhaps the most visually distinct filmmaker in shorts. A gifted animator, he crafts amazing films in anachronistic styles, creating zany, fast-paced stream-of-conscious narratives that come close to pure cinema. Tesla takes everything you loved about Mynarski and turns the nob to 11. 

Madre

Dir: Rodrigo Sorogoyen

The most effective horror short in recent memory, without a single monster. The worst thing that could happen to any parent, has just occurred. A mother gets a phone call from her son who went away for the weekend with his father. He’s lost, and alone, and doesn’t know where her is, and his battery is failing. Rodrigo Sorogoyen perfectly captures the building anxiety and the helplessness of mothers, with a stellar performance from Marta Nieto.

An Imagined Conversation: Kanye West & Stephen Hawking

Dir: Sol Friedman

SotW alum, Sol Friedman is back with a new short film. An Imagined Conversation: Kanye West & Stephen Hawking uses the same animation style than Day 40, and his signature sense of humour. Friedman allows us to witness a surprising-entertaining discussion from physics to Drake between an odd pair of geniuses.

Bickford Park

Dir: Dane Clark, Linsey Stewart

Celebrated on S/W for the emotionally intelligent shorts, Long Branch & Margo Lily, the real-life couple of Clark and Stewart are back in shorts after their debut feature. This opening night film explores a woman on the edge of restlessness and dissatisfaction in her marriage. Maybe a cute skateboarder is the jolt she needs to get out of her rut?

Min Börda (The Burden)

Dir: Niki Lindroth von Bahr

The overall shorts winner this year, this is a masterpiece. With gorgeously intricate stop-motion, and a deeply weird premise, you’ll laugh, cry, and be tripped out. An instant Oscar front-runner. 

A Gentle Night

Dir: Qiu Yang

We were intensely interested in this one, the Palm d’Or winner at Cannes. The film doesn’t disappoint, as a mother braves the cold Chinese night to hunt for her daughter who may be missing. No one, not the authorities, not her husband, seem to share her alarm however, as she doggedly pursues clues to her child’s whereabouts. Interestingly shot, and emotionally powerful, seek this one out. 

We Forgot to Break Up

Dir: Chandler Levack

A local Toronto film, coming out of the same scene that produced Her Friend Adam, a band’s manager returns after a long unexplained absence to reconnect with his old friends. Tempers flair as feelings of betrayal are expressed, and individuals struggle with the knowledge that “he” used to be “she”. One of the best transgender shorts we’ve seen, the film remembers to construct a engaging plot around its central revelation. 

Features

Bodied

Dir. Joseph Kahn

This ended up being a twofer of alums for us. We wrote about music video maestro Joseph Kahn when his edgy Power Rangers fan film lit up the internet, but the film also stars Rory Uphold, a twice featured director in one of the main roles. A savage take on the battle rap genre popularized by the film’s Exec Producer Eminem in his biopic 8 Mile, the film tackles race relations and PC culture in whip smart fashion and with savage wit. Super funny, super thought-provoking, the film won the audience choice for the fest’s Midnight program.

Disappearance

Dir: Ali Asgari

Ali Asgari (The Baby) enlisted writing partner Farnoosh Samadi for his first feature. Celebrated in the short form, Asgari delivers yet again a captivating and complex story of two teenagers in love faced with the consequences of their acts in Iran’s strict moral code of conduct. Sadaf Asgari and Amir Reza Ranjbaran’s performances masterfully captured by Asgari’s camera gives us a glimpse of the reality of the Iranian youth.

Kissing Candice

Dir: Aoife Mcardle 

Aoife McArdle is a director I’ve long admired for her elegant music videos and increasingly hi-profile commercial work. We covered her 10min U2 mv/short film hybrid Every Breaking Wave in 2015. Kissing Candice is her feature debut, made with the help of the Irish Film Board and her production company Somesuch, which has a killer director lineup, but which, as a young company, is still nascent in features. Gorgeously shot as to be expected, the film’s highs are superhigh—mysterious, dark, sexy and thrilling. But, with an odd structure, and enigmatic storytelling, the film will be a hard sell for a lot of audiences. I personally love it, but it is a music video director’s film in both the best and worst connotations.

Unicorn Store

Dir: Brie Larson

Before being awarded an academy award for her performance in Room, Brie Larson was a S/W featured director for her short film Weighting, and Unicorn Store is her feature directorial debut. Larson explores existential crisis, and being forced into adulthood in a quirky yet charming way with lots of colors and glitter! A-listers Joan Cusack, Bradley Whitford and Samuel L. Jackson join her on the cast of her delightful and belated coming-of-age story.

Mary Goes Round

Dir: Molly Mcglynn

Molly McGlynn (3-Way Not Calling) delivers a smart, subtly funny, and emotional, character driven first feature. Starring Aya Cash as the lead, she remarkably portrays a substance abuse counsellor hitting rock bottom. McGlynn perfectly captured the journey Mary goes on and her interactions with all the other characters gravitating around her. Emma Hunter and Kristian Bruun, from her S/W featured short, make cameos, and S/W team member Céline even appears on camera as an uncredited (but oscar worthy!) frozen doctor walking in the background.

Killing of a sacred deer

Dir:Yorgos Lanthimos

Ok, so Greek auteur Yorgos Lanthimos (The Lobster) is not a featured S/W filmmaker. But no other film at the festival had an S/W team member in the final credits—congrats Adam Banks! It also features a breakout role for Barry Keoghan who we recently saw on our site in North. Oh yeah, the film is awesome too.

Five Fingers For Marseilles

Dir: Michael Matthews

Recently featured for his wild and raunchy sci-fi proof-of-concept Apocalypse Now Now, Matthews maintains momentum with this polished Western set in South Africa. Adapting the genre’s archetypes to the modern day, Matthew’s shows an intuitive grasp of what makes genre work, and undoubtedly sets himself up for for exciting stuff in 2018 and beyond.

I Kill Giants

Dir: Anders Walter

We weren’t able to catch this one unfortunately, but we really like Walter who we featured for 9 Meter, and whom won an Oscar for Helium. This is his first feature, and with sterling reviews out of the festival we have high-hopes that it’ll come to cinemas in 2018.