The best short films at the 2018 BFI Lon­don Film Festival

Amid all the excite­ment of the BFI Lon­don Film Fes­ti­val, it’s per­haps inevitable that short films tend to get over­looked. With 225 fea­tures play­ing over 11 days, the LFF is one of Europe’s most stacked film fes­ti­vals, where emerg­ing artists like Domin­ga Sotomay­or min­gle with heavy­weight auteurs like the Coen broth­ers. Yet over a third of films at this year’s LFF – includ­ing an all-new pro­gramme addi­tion, the Sur­prise Trea­sure – are short form, bear­ing sig­na­tures from new­com­ers and past mas­ters alike. Here are some of the best to look out for dur­ing the festival’s 62^nd edition.

Fans of Michael Haneke and Joan­na Hogg will rel­ish this dark com­e­dy about the micro-aggres­sions that accrue from shar­ing domes­tic space – but in this cramped con­do, the nui­sance in ques­tion is a ful­ly-grown roost­er (“the Don!”). Rishi Chandna’s doc­u­men­tary unfolds through a series of inter­views with the Mum­bai fam­i­ly to whom Tun­grus has become a loy­al pet and poten­tial din­ner. While their patri­arch cod­dles the chick­en, oth­ers – includ­ing two house cats – can’t wait to see the back of him; plucked and grilled. The end­ing is sure to divide ani­mal lovers.

Fol­low­ing his 10-hour epic Paint Dry­ing – both a prank and polemic on the BBFC – Char­lie Lyne returns with anoth­er work about the back­wards prac­tices of a British insti­tu­tion. This time his focus is far more sober­ing. Pre­sent­ed as a slideshow of court doc­u­ments and organ­ised via an oral his­to­ry by the pros­e­cut­ed Roland Jag­gard, Lyne recounts the sto­ry of ​“16 men put on tri­al for sado­masochism in the dying days of Thatcher’s Britain.” One mem­o­rable protest declared, ​“This is not love!” But in his reassess­ment of the evi­dence, Lyne pow­er­ful­ly reminds us that nei­ther was this justice.

In this qua­si-sequel to her 1990 film Sanc­tus, which repur­posed X‑ray footage to demys­ti­fy the gen­dered body, queer icon Bar­bara Ham­mer goes even fur­ther, equat­ing her frail, age­ing fig­ure with reels of decay­ing (DNA-like) cel­lu­loid. Ham­mer dances between the frames of a visu­al trip­tych while footage of a CT scan floats over her bald head. The images are often beau­ti­ful – her cau­date nucle­us swims like a but­ter­fly in the brain – but also loaded with anx­i­ety, fear­ful of an end that the cropped visu­al space sug­gests as ever enclos­ing. It’s a stun­ning­ly pow­er­ful film.

In Ubisoft’s dystopi­an shoot­er ​‘The Divi­sion’, a tac­ti­cal unit is dis­patched to inves­ti­gate the cause of a small­pox pan­dem­ic in New York. But the genius of Leon­hard Müll­ner and Robin Klengel’s machin­i­ma is to dif­fuse the ten­sion of a search-and-recov­er video game by re-cast­ing your squad leader as an NYC tour guide. In a per­fect (albeit post-apoc­a­lyp­tic) fac­sim­i­le of Man­hat­tan, he deliv­ers a troop of flâneurs from the projects to a crum­bling Trump Tow­er, duck­ing for cov­er when ene­mies fall into his zig-zag­ging tra­jec­to­ry. Droll and sub­ver­sive, this is one of the LFF’s hid­den gems.

Ear­li­er this year ris­ing star Jenn Nkiru shot sec­ond unit on the Carters’ APESHIT video, a film that unfreezes black­ness from colo­nial images of slav­ery and muti­la­tion, and reasserts the ongo­ing cul­tur­al dom­i­nance of African-Amer­i­cans. For her direc­to­r­i­al debut, the British-Niger­ian film­mak­er traces that dom­i­nance with a wider geo­graph­i­cal view, assem­bling an incred­i­ble mon­tage of 20^th and 21^st cen­tu­ry pol­i­tics and art. Includ­ing new­ly shot dance footage, and archival imagery of Sun Ra and the Black Pan­thers, Rebirth is Nec­es­sary lives up to its title – its ener­gy is com­plete­ly rejuvenating.

Jen­nifer Reed­er has estab­lished her­self as a main­stay of the LFF’s shorts pro­gramme with films like Blood Below the Skin and Crys­tal Lake, in which she colours the inte­ri­or lives of teenage girls with trin­kets, toys, posters and pho­tos, devel­op­ing char­ac­ter through inti­mate­ly lived-in spaces. Sur­pris­ing­ly, Lola, 15 is her first pure­ly ​‘spa­tial’ film, struc­tured as a series of slow pans through a teen girl’s vio­let-coloured bed­room, like a shoegaze remake of Chan­tal Akerman’s La Cham­bre. Set to a shim­mer­ing synth score by Nick Zin­ner, it’s a pow­er­ful evo­ca­tion of the sacred spaces we call home.

In her fea­ture films (Inno­cence, Evo­lu­tion), Lucile Hadži­halilović injects bio­log­i­cal hor­ror into the body/​gender pan­ic of clas­sic com­ing-of-age fairy tales. De Natu­ra boils her themes down to a shot-sized potion – across its five min­utes, two girls in red wan­der an emp­tied for­est of fun­gi and dropped apples. Rather than craft a clear sto­ry, Hadži­halilović relates objects and colours with sym­bol­ic val­ues, sug­gest­ing a space where sto­ries could hap­pen. It’s per­fect­ly placed in the LFF’s Cre­ate strand – like a dusty old hard­back with pages miss­ing, audi­ences will delight in fill­ing in the blanks of this gor­geous tale.

In his lat­est film cycle, Kevin Jerome Ever­son explores democ­ra­cy and jus­tice through the African-Amer­i­can expe­ri­ence – Ton­sler Park takes place in Char­lottesville polling sta­tions on 8 Novem­ber, while Ears, Nose and Throat addressed a fatal shoot­ing with deep con­se­quences for Everson’s own fam­i­ly. In this new pair­ing, Ever­son depicts the real­i­ty of wear­ing black­ness. In Rich­land Blue he re-enacts, via a roam­ing POV at the back of a con­ve­nience store, a video pro­duced by the cor­rupt Rich­land Coun­ty police depart­ment; God­dess reframes the nar­ra­tive, focus­ing on a moth­er whose chil­dren may not be com­ing home.

The 62^nd BFI Lon­don Film Fes­ti­val runs 10 – 21 Octo­ber. Check out the full pro­gramme at what​son​.bfi​.org​.uk/lff/