Daughters of the Late Colonel (2026)

A fun short where two daughters of an overbearing old colonel try and figure out what to do with their life. They certainly know what they do not want! Another old man to tell them what to do!

I enjoyed the animation style in this as it was an exercise in the least you can show and still have people work out what it is. Human brains excel in this always finding patterns in stuff that isn’t there, something that “AI” uses when it is simple pattern matching for things people recognise.

I also liked the cheeky actual film inserts of close up cut-aways that were either too annoying to animate or they did not have the time to do it.

There is a range of different art mediums in this from pen and ink to paint and even the film shots.

This one got a lot of laughs and I even said hello to the director about it.

 

Film details:

Director: Elizabeth Hobbs

Producer: Abigail Addison, Fabian Driehorst

Screenwriter: Elizabeth Hobbs

Composer: Hutch Demouilpied

Editor: Mark Jenkins

Year: 2026

Length: 9 mins

Country: UK, Germany

Language: English

Genre: Animation, Drama, Comedy

 

Website/socials

https://www.lizzyhobbs.co.uk/

https://www.instagram.com/hobbslizzy

 

Trailer

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1lQcI-f8Mkc

 

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Our Choir Has Always Been Travelling (2025)

A special screening as this short had won the Erwin Rado award for best Australian short on the weekend and two of the members of the choir introduced it. There were too many people who wanted to talk to them after for me to say hello! Some friends have been to see the choir and enjoyed it.

This film covers the story of the Ntaria Choir of Hermannsburg told in their own artwork including painting and sculpture (for the planes and cars) with the narration from members of the choir themselves.

It follows the choir from when it was first set up on the German mission in Hermannsburg to the kids wanting to join bands and not choirs so they merged with other choirs from central Australia. They end up touring the country and overseas. One of the best parts was the pilot asking the ladies to “please sing louder” and making the German audiences cry when they played in the cathedral in the German city of Hermannsburg.

Hopefully this gets picked up for screening on the ABC or similar as I remember when they used to play shorts and animation in between shows. I am sure a lot of people will want to see it on its festival run and also outside the festivals.

 

Film details:

Director: Marjorie “Nunga” Williams, Nelson Armstrong, Judith Pungarta Inkamala

Producer: Ness Sim, Alinta Brown, Eloise Lindeback

Screenwriter: Judith Pungarta Inkamala, Eloise Lindeback, Anita Mbitjana Ratara, Marjorie “Nunga” Williams, Betty Conway, N. Donald, Lizzie Topsoy Topora Jako

Featured Subjects: Lizzie Topsoy Topora Jako, Anita Mbitjana Ratara, Betty Conway, N. Donald, Marjorie “Nunga” Williams, Judith Pungarta Inkamala

Year: 2025

Length: 10 mins

Country: Australia

Language: English, Western Aranda

Genre: Animation, Documentary

 

Socials

https://www.instagram.com/tangentyereartists/

https://www.instagram.com/hermannsburgpotters/

https://www.instagram.com/studio.peeki/

https://www.instagram.com/turbielly/

 

Trailer

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KDl6Eto8jH4

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Hold It Together (2026)

A woman from Mali struggles to fit in a new country while missing her grandma and her only respite is a weekly swim at pool and steam room. When people question her about where she comes from or seem rude, she doesn’t know how to deal with it and struggles to keep it together. Eventually after a long time she finds one of the other elderly visitors has much more in common with her than she thought.

A great painterly animation style with this one with interesting looking character designs and the places look authentic like it is a real place the director had been. Seems very cold to go in the hot tub outside in the winter but that’s Nordic culture for you.

As an avowed watcher of Foreign Correspondent and Dateline I enjoy seeing stories from overseas and this is a different type of way of learning someone’s story but also still being entertaining. Well worth to check out.

 

Film details:

Director: Fan Sissoko

Producer: Heather Millard, Stéphanie Launay, Julien Melebeck

Screenwriter: Fan Sissoko

Composer: Hafdís Bjarnadóttir

Key Cast: Halldóra Geirharðsdóttir, Grace Seri

Year: 2026

Length: 12 mins

Country: France, Belgium, Iceland

Language: English, French, Icelandic

Genre: Animation, Drama

 

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My Good Boy (2025)

A woman has a strange relationship with her dog and partner to the point you do not really know who she loves more. It seems a lot like a lot of the Instagram dogs I follow on the platform taken to a more extreme end. Was a funny short and it had some great scenes in it.

I forwarded information about the short to an artist as I thought it was very suited to their style. Always a good sign if you want to show something to other artists as you were impressed by it enough to share.

The animation style is a lot of flat lines and stylised figures but it really suits the story and characters and you do not get tired of looking at it. The artist seems to be a popular illustrator from Italy and has a lot of things published. Always a bonus finding new artists to follow on socials to inspire my own artworks.

This one could almost have been on the WTF shorts but that one seemed to be pretty full this year so they bought it over to this screening. I could not make the WTF shorts this year due to being in hospital the week before the first weekend so bumped some of my screenings.

 

Film details:

Director: Sara Priorelli

Producer: Moholy Nagy University of Arts

Screenwriter: Sara Priorelli

Composer: Andrea Priorelli

Editor: Judit Czakó, Sara Priorelli

Year: 2025

Length: 6 mins

Country: Italy

Language: English

Genre: Animation, Comedy

 

Socials

https://www.instagram.com/prosarapi/

https://www.instagram.com/foolworks.studio/

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Boundaries (2025)

A passenger on a bus gets their personal space invaded by another passenger leaning their seat back leading to an exploration of spaces in modernism and surrealism with all kinds of things going on it different spaces.

This did seem like an exploration of 20^th century art in a way I have not seen for a while, had a bunch of different art styles including Cubism, Surrealism, Modernism amongst others. I swear I saw some artworks that were just like these but can’t remember the exact ones.

Over the end credits they showed how it was animated with stop motion but all the animation frames are their own painting it seems and they moved painted elements around in a way that made it seem like they belonged in the scene.

There is no dialogue in this one but you didn’t really need it as the images are expressive enough on their own.

Well worth a look if you are a fan of modern art or just these sorts of shorts in general.

 

Film details:

Director: Seun Yee

Producer: Seun Yee

Screenwriter: Seun Yee

Cinematographer: Seun Yee

Composer: Jan Šikl

Editor: Seun Yee

Production Designer: Seun Yee

Year: 2025

Length: 11 mins

Country: South Korea

Language: No Dialogue

Genre: Animation, Drama

 

Socials

https://www.instagram.com/seunyee_/

 

Trailer

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OED2c8kmyv8

 

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Please (2026)

A funny film where various people express their innermost desires often to no-one or people who do not really care about them. Some unintended consequences result.

A great stop motion animation style with what looks like needle-felted models and it reminded me of “The Tale of Little Puppetboy” by Johannes Nyholm but that was clay. In the same spirit at least.

Some funny situations in this like the knight and his damsel that I immediately sent to an artist I know who works at a castle (I almost took a photo of the screen for that scene! Naughty!)

Crying over the overwhelming selection of chips seems totally normal, doubly so if you go to the average Asian supermarket!

You can 100% just say anything on public transport or public transport these days and people will not notice as they are on their phones. “Nobody wants me!” indeed!

The main heart of the film is the CEO with the baby head who eventually finds solace with the Hare Krishnas as the world burns.

Well worth your time and a lot of interesting character designs and sets to look at.

 

Film details:

Director: Anna Mantzaris

Producer: Tonje Skar Reiersen, Radim Procházka, Lise Fearnley, Erika Forzy, Johan Edström, Jani Lehto, Caroline Audebert, Marc Bodin-Joyeux

Screenwriter: Anna Mantzaris

Cinematographer: Donna Wade

Composer: Scuta Salamanca, Karen Street, Chloe Heatlie, Phil Brookes

Editor: Anna Mantzaris

Production Designer: Amanda Aagard

Costume Designer: Anna Mantzaris

Special effects: Hugo Vieites Caamaño, Animation: Juliette Paquet, Eirik Grønmo Bjørnsen, Lucille Braconnier, Jens Jonathan Gulliksen, Marek Jasaň, Jiří Krupička

Key Cast: Stellan Skarsgård, Molly Nilsson, Jonatan Unge, Ika Nord, Johan Edström

Year: 2026

Length: 8 mins

Country: France, Sweden, Finland, Norway, Czechia

Language: English

Genre: Animation, Comedy

 

Website/socials

 

https://www.instagram.com/annamantzaris/

Trailer

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ShJW8vmvAA

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Balconada (2025)

Residents in an apartment block on their balconies are apart but also together when a summer storm rolls through which somehow brings them closer together.

The animation style is line drawings with flat colours that are slightly textured but it does suit the story it is trying to tell. The characters are quite stylised but you can tell what people are meant to be and they work well in the context of this story.

Great music in this one that suits the story and helps to move it along. There is some flute in it but that really adds to the overall soundtrack rather than being the main thing.

This is another one of those shorts that would not be out of place on a station like SBS TV back in the day when they ran shorts like this on the Eat Carpet show, my main place where I saw shorts!

 

Film details:

Director: Iva Tokmakchieva

Producer: Vessela Dantcheva, Christophe Camoirano

Screenwriter: Iva Tokmakchieva

Cinematographer: Célia Tocco

Composer: Amin Goudarzi

Editor: Noemie Azul Loeve

Year: 2025

Length: 8 mins

Country: Bulgaria

Language: No Dialogue

Genre: Animation

 

Socials

https://www.instagram.com/ivatokmak/

 

Trailer

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gZWD1y5-IdI

 

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Paper Trail (2026)

Don Hertzfeldt he of Rejected (2000) returns with a surprisingly sweet and thoughtful film about scratchy drawings that lead to 40 years of filling out forms until you are back to scratchy drawings again. Nobody’s anus is bleeding in this one.

All the animation consists of drawing that seems to be animated and drawn by the artist and even some painted. They do a great job of making it look they are done by the same person but at different stages of their life.

I know from my own drawing that using physical media means that your works take up physical space so after 6 years I have a wardrobe and four 50 litre tubs of drawings. I could not imagine “drawing every day” quite apart from the fact I would run out of space I would also get sick of it and run out of mojo for drawing, it happens! The longest I can draw concurrently is 6hrs for the life drawing marathons online, often getting up early in the morning. I always end up drawing enough for solo exhibition with those! Instagram thought I was a robot at least once as I put up so many drawings concurrently!

Back to the film, it did take me a little while to clock what was going on. It is the opposite of ASMR at the start with some of the drawing sounds being really annoying. Soon enough you get to the “filling out forms until you die” bit and it gets sad.

Well worth checking out if you get the chance, for something that is just lines on a page it is quite affecting!

 

Film details:

Director: Don Hertzfeldt

Producer: Don Hertzfeldt

Screenwriter: Don Hertzfeldt

Composer: Naomi Alligator

Editor: Don Hertzfeldt

Year: 2026

Length: 14 mins

Country: USA

Language: No Dialogue

Genre: Animation, Drama

 

Website/socials

http://www.bitterfilms.com/

https://www.instagram.com/don_hertzfeldt/

 

Trailer

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KqGtxW2MBDw

 

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Once in a Body (2025)

A very expressive painted experience in seemingly oil paints about body dysmorphia and similar issues explored in this film.

You certainly do not get tired of looking at the same thing as it changes so much in this. I know oil paints take ages to dry so having each frame be its own oil painting would extend the production time out to months. Was supposedly a movie that used the same method and it took actual years.

Would recommend this one to people who have experience in life drawing as there are a lot of figure studies in this. If you do enough life drawing you cannot be judgemental in bodies, you want to see more and different types of bodies. Something has fundamentally changed in my brain from doing a lot of it that I cannot explain myself!

I did go and look for the artist on socials and the production company as I enjoyed the artwork in this so much so it did have a  n impact on me. Well worth seeking out even if you are not big into art as it is quite unique.

 

Film details:

Director: María Cristina Pérez González

Producer: Mauricio Cuervo Rincón, Pez Dorado Animaciones

Composer: Daniel Gwilym Jones Cozzarelli

Editor: Mauricio Cuervo Rincón

Year: 2025

Length: 10 mins

Country: USA, Colombia

Language: Spanish

Genre: Animation

 

Socials

https://www.instagram.com/pezdoradoanimaciones/

 

Trailer

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DGdbGvJXMNs

 

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The End (2026)

Some ordinary animals are about to land at a major airport and are annoyed that the last episode of “The Rose” is not loading due to WIFI issues on the flight. At the airport air traffic control is not responding as they are also watching it while other business goes on at the airport as normal.

A fun stop motion animation where all the characters are animals that seem pretty normal despite the fact, they are animals. The predators and prey have no trouble hanging out with each other and still eat other animals it seems.

Quite a lot of people seem to be involved in this even in the voice acting, a real multi-national effort!

I enjoyed all of the character designs and the models are not actually that small when you see the behind-the-scenes footage. It does make them easier to animate and light if you make them bigger and also lets you do so some effects and not have them seem off like lighting.

This director also had a short around a similar theme at MIFF in 2020 called Something to Remember (2019), a time that seemed like the end of the world as MIFF was entirely online that year! The setting of this one was a bit different and it was quite a bit more ambitious. That makes them the second director I have seen in a shorts program twice. The director of Unicorn Wars also was in the WTF shorts program and then had two other movies in the festival. (1) (2)

Highly recommended and I hope to see this director one day do a full animated movie even that seems quite a way off given how long these things take to make.

 

Film details:

Director: Niki Lindroth von Bahr

Producer: Kalle Wettre, Justin Pechberty, Johan Oettenger, Damien Megherbi, Clara Marquardt, Lars Amby

Screenwriter: Niki Lindroth von Bahr, Jen Silverman

Composer: Hans Appelqvist

Editor: Henry Moore Selder, Niki Lindroth von Bahr

Production Designer: Nicklas Nilsson

Key Cast: Tilda Swinton, George MacKay, Michael Shannon, Moses Ingram, Bronagh Gallagher, Danielle Ryan, Lennie James, Tim McInnerny

Year: 2026

Length: 17 mins

Country: France, Denmark, Sweden

Language: English, Finnish, Swedish

Genre: Animation, Comedy

 

Socials

https://www.instagram.com/niki_lindroth_von_bahr/

 

Trailer

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kvRUErrZZpE