Last Thursday female filmmakers, their crews and stars, and industry professionals came together for the 225 Film Club’s Official Selection screening night, held once again at the BFI. The festival was hosted by director Rita Osei, who created, curates and produces the 225 Film Club, with the screening supported by BFI Inclusion.
Showcasing a range of bold and compelling performances – moving, brave and often also hilarious – this collection of 15 short films shows the extraordinary talent bubbling over in the female filmmaking space. The 225 Film Club is dedicated to female excellence in direction, and once again I find myself thrilled and awed not just at the stories told but the skill and flair in telling them.
What came through strongly with many of this year’s films is how many end with a sense of hope in the air, in the face of threats and horrors women face around the world.
This year’s BEST SHORT FILM is… Jellyfish & Lobster, with a special mention to Sleepyhead.
The winning film was chosen by a distinguished jury headed by Brenda Gilbert, Vice Chair of BANFF World Media Festival and Board Member at Film Independent. The rest of the jury comprised the actor, director, writer and producer Nicole Ansari Cox; Abraham Adeyemi, a multi-award-winning writer-director from South London; Danish screenwriter Line Langebek (The Girl With The Needle); Sire Ramos, Head of Development at LIPSYNC, the internationally recognised film and TV post production and financing company; and Simon Young, Vice President – EMEA Acquisitions at Shorts International.
Watch Jellyfish & Lobster now:
Check out my round-up reviews of 2024’s 225 Film Club Official Selection films, and all the film posters, below.
WILD SUMMON – Karni Arieli & Saul Freed (14.01)
The life cycle of a salmon may not seem exciting – or even emotional – but Wild Summon, narrated by singer Marianne Faithfull, uses anthropomorphism in the best (and most unexpected) way. A female salmon is born in the cold waters of Scandinavia to head out into the even less hospitable oceans, before making her way back, somehow, to “the particular patch of gravel she was born on”. Sometimes the water is a sanctuary as storms rage above and sometimes a place of danger, where a killer could be made of scales and teeth, or thin plastic.
The pull of home is a visceral one for the salmon, as the dramas of nature and Man expand and contract around them on their lifecycle journeys. Inventive and gripping, this is nature filmmaking at its best.
RETURNED – Janet Marrett (11.25)
A missing child, and a mother trying to carry on years after interest has waned and the world has moved on. Writer-director Janet Marrett’s heartbreaking but vital film melds the mundane with a parent’s open-ended nightmare, as Zoe, a counsellor whose job is helping traumatised clients find a way through their own darkness, is brought to the edge herself. Having learned to co-exist with the dull ache of long term grief, her loss is brought into sharp relief on one particular day.
The everyday locations serve to highlight the hidden sorrows borne by strangers we may pass every day, while Michelle Greenidge delivers a bold and uncompromising performance as Zoe. Breaking society’s norms of behaviour, she is finally forced to face a life that may never provide her with an answer, however tantalisingly close it may sometimes seem.
Ceres – Amelia Sears (14.32)
A pretty cottage and garden, enclosed by wall and gate, sits, a place of safety among bleak, squelching marshes. Every frame and every action is heavy with meaning in Ceres, as a young woman finds sanctuary there in the care of her mother.
Ceres (Juliet Stevenson) and her daughter Prosepina (Hannah Morrish, who also wrote the short) bond during Prosepina’s unexpected and initially uncomfortable visit, but when she leaves the sanctuary she at least takes with her the comforting touch of her mother. If you’re not up on your ancient world deities now might be the time to google Ceres (yes, I had to!). Directed by Amelia Sears, Ceres is produced in support of Women’s Aid, with the aim of highlighting coercive control in romantic relationships, and also highlights Women’s Aid’s 50th birthday campaign message: “come together to end domestic abuse”.
RE-LIVE – Lotus Hannon (14.55)
Lotus Hannon’s film highlights dissociation after trauma, as a young woman strives to heal herself after being sexually assaulted while out running. Amy (Kassius Nelson) is tormented by nightmares that force her to relive what happened, until she decides to put on those same trainers and go running again. Nelson is superb, an “everyyoungwoman” desperate to get back to an ordinary life when freedom is the normality of choosing where you want to run.
With a 15 minute run time Hannon uses sound, colour and texture expertly to show the before and after. Amy’s flat is cosily stylish, and safe – all creams and beige, very hygge – while outside life is bright, chaotic, noisy and thrown together. Her old running gear is all clashing bright colours, memories of an artless, fearless existence. Not an easy film to watch but an eminently hopeful one.
DUSTLIGHT – Chryssanthi Kouri (20.06)
A bereaved young woman, whose own life is in a state of flux, has a chance to pause and say goodbye in this short from writer-director Chryssanthi Kouri. For Matina (Youlika Skafida), clearing out her late mother’s house is initially an escape. Outside all is bright, while inside Matina exists with her memories while hiding from her present in the half-light.
She seems almost mesmerised, dreamlike, in her mother’s house until, standing in front of her mother’s wardrobe she breaks her reverie, frantically inhaling the scent of her from her clothes before stuffing them into bin bags. Creating chaos out of order, it seems like the opposite of how we see the clearing out of a loved one’s life but is probably nearer the truth than we like to think. Skafida puts in a relaxed yet captivating performance as Matina finds the strength to move on.
DISCORD – Jen Lim (5.30)
One of my favourites, despite (or maybe because of) my utter lack of musicality, Discord is short and… not sweet exactly, but ear-popping and droll. Writer-director Jen Lim’s five minute film pits a teenage piano student against her rule-bound teacher, whose precise methods seem to seek to crush any joy or indeed natural rhythm from her pupil’s playing.
From the tap-tap of the student’s school shoes to the crash of a door and the tick-tick of the metronome, noises everywhere fight to disrupt or to hem in. The denouement is unexpected and very funny, leaving both stunned. What can I say? I’m sure they’ve both learned something from their meeting.
WILD ANIMAL – Beth Park (18.56)
An elegant woman standing on a dam, shouting into her mobile phone at a minion who has not done what they should have done; a baby abandoned among sagging binbags; another woman in a tracksuit scampering away up a hillside ignoring cries for her to stop.
Charlotte Riley stars as Mallory, a fish out of water in her shocking pink heels and sharp bob, the beautiful but bare Welsh hills rising above her. This emotive film, made with help from the charity Action on Postpartum Psychosis, explores this very serious mental health emergency suffered by some new mothers, which can include hallucinations, mania and confusion. Riley is fantastic as a woman on the edge, her carefully constructed carapace starting to crack and crumble leaving her terrified and exposed.
SELVEDGE – Aleksandra Czenczek (10.45)
Having its world premiere at the festival, Selvedge follows a separated family struggling to find each other in a land hostile to the very thought of them. As posters dot the landscape declaring EARTH IS FOR EARTHLINGS Selvedge asks us what would we face down to break through the barriers constructed to keep us apart.
Whipped-up hysteria has othered the AI-humanoids who previously lived peacefully with humans. With most chased down and thrown into camps, the few still hiding out try to keep one stop ahead of the soldiers sent to find them. Yet Selvedge is hopeful rather than despondent. Director Aleksandra Csenczek, working from a script by Mehzeb Chowdhury, creates a tense, sparse world with a few deft brushstrokes, while young Ella Rose Minott’s Nara has a power and steadfastness to discard the past and connect. I think the kids are going to be alright.
PIGS – Julia Jackman (13.42)
Wine, wine everywhere but not a drop to drink, as Laura (Bessie Carter) arrives for dinner with her mother and grandmother, a pair of posh but down-on-their-luck lushes who refuse to share their vino, and are now down to what is probably their last sellable family heirloom. Pigs boasts two national treasures in its cast and is an absolute hoot, or should that be a grunt, or an oink. I actually laughed out loud – while alone in my kitchen – when Laura is forced into that classic movie “let down your hair” moment.
Olivia Williams is deliciously selfish and waspish as Laura’s mother, her snout in the trough now the bailiffs are at the door; and Carter is rather touching as a woman clinging on to one treasured memory in the sticky, messy maelstrom of family life. This is a slick, sharp film about a family which is anything but; the dinner table tableaux at the end a sickly monument to their profligacy and excess.
A.V VAN – Morayo Akandé (12.08)
This was my first watch from this year’s 225 Film Club official selection, and A V Van did not disappoint, thanks to the witty and warm relationship between sisters Moyo Akande and Morayo Akande as twentysomething sisters Vivien and Abby, and also the film’s perfect styling. Sorting through the belongings of their late dad while channelling Daphne and Velma from Scooby Doo, in their very own Monster Machine, they try to solve the mystery of who their newly deceased father really was – and what to do with his impressive, if unexpected, legacy.
Abby may be the more rueful of the two, and Vivien more in-your-face, but together the journey they go on – whilst barely leaving a Scottish car park – is both touching and funny. A V Van may be self-contained but it’s also one of those shorts that made me hope for a future, longer version.
SLEEPYHEAD – Milly Garnier (10.08)
Rae (Olivia Marcus), a 17 year old Jewish girl, finds herself homebound by a chronic illness just when she should breaking out into the world. Her oldest friends rally until irritation drowns out sympathy; her mother weeps in a pristine, shiny kitchen as Rae’s bedroom descends into chaos.
Marcus is pin-sharp as the all-too-observant Rae, helped by inventive and witty filmmaking from director Milly Garnier. How Rae deals with her interested yet unhelpful doctors is a hoot; but she is also forced to be wise beyond her years as she tries to navigate this strange, suffocating new normal.
JELLYFISH & LOBSTER – Yasmin Afifi (20.01)
This is an absolute gem of a film: hilarious, sad, and beautiful pitched as Grace (Flo Wilson), terminally ill with cancer, has a final fling with Medi (Sayed Badreya), a man with Alzheimers who she first meets in their care home laundry cupboard. It’s a prosaic location, though they soon discover somewhere special: a gorgeous swimming pool in the basement. Here, and in the laundry cupboard, they face their futures – Medi hoping to remember the now, Grace overcome with memories of her youth. It’s very funny, as they try to squeeze the last drops of meaning, and sex (lots of sex) from life, but it’s also almost unbearably poignant as they admit their fears to each other.
Wilson and Badreya have a joyous chemistry, with the film anchored by Wilson’s extraordinary performance as the swearing, smoking, dying, uncompromising Grace.
LULLABY – Chi Thai (14.42)
Grief and guilt conspire in this film from Chi Thai, who wrote, directed and produced. Jan Le plays a young woman (we never find out her name) newly moved into a bare and down-at-heel house and working in one of its rooms as a seamstress.
Water is everywhere – dripping, overflowing, oozing. By night her flooded dreams are soundtracked by people’s fearful screams and increasingly the day brings little respite, as a basement door repeatedly opens, calling her down to face what haunts her. Lullaby is creepy and tense, anchored by an almost silent but heartfelt performance from Le.
SISTER WIVES – Louisa Connolly-Burnham (28.57)
For Kaidence, living in a religious sect in the US, the sudden – and unwanted – arrival of new sister wife Galilee (Mia McKenna-Bruce) is an imposition too far, not that she can do anything about it. Soon though, with their husband Jeremiah away, Kaidence (Louisa Connolly-Burnham, who also wrote, directed and produced), discovers a lot she never knew about herself.
At 29 minutes this is the longest film in our official selection, with time to tease out Kaidence’s suppressed feelings about herself and what she has lost, the leaders of her community chipping away at every small thing that has brought her joy. In this world of slow quiet, Connolly-Burnham’s face betrays Kaidence’s real feelings about her predicament, and gradually shrinking world, in so many tiny moments; while Galilee is not just a potential soulmate but also a lightning rod.
Watch Sister Wives on Channel 4 now
THE WOMAN IN THE WARDROBE – Ruby Phelan (7.08)
A profoundly moving and beautifully filmed short about pregnancy and birth during conflicts, and the unique vulnerabilities of new mothers and their babies who are often forgotten victims of war.
The Woman In The Wardrobe was written and directed by Ruby Phelan, and made in association with the Feminist Centre for Racial Justice. Beginning with a young woman, Nadiya, in labour in her family’s wardrobe as fighting rages outside. Nadiya’s actions call to the primal history of motherhood (even in times of peace women have long retreated into dark seclusion, and themselves, to give birth) but also demands we urgently face the realities of war that in this modern age continue to weigh so heavily on mothers and children.
As with so many labouring mothers there is something instinctive about Nadiyah, beautifully portrayed by Afsaneh Dehrouyeh, focussed only on surviving the night with her unborn child.
225 Film Club posters
More on this year’s festival
225 Film Club Longlist, 2024 (posted 9 September 2024)
225 Film Club Official Selection, 2004 announced (posted 4 November 2024)
225 Film Club is a proud member of the Association of Independent Film Festivals (AIFF).
“Empowering Filmmakers, Enriching Festivals: Embracing Independent Vision” https://www.aiff.uk/
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