Аt this year’s Gent Film Fest, I was puzzled by the idea of understanding the essence of short film. It’s not that I don’t love it. But it’s hard for me to watch several short films in a row, each time emotionally connected to a theme, usually completely different. Likewise, I’m not a big fan of the jumble of tiny dishes and flavours in Michelin-level restaurants. It leaves a strange, scattered, confused aftertaste.

So I went to the Short Film Award Ceremony and saw the faces of young filmmakers with burning eyes. The long metre is expensive to produce and traumatic to pitch (though formulating ideas for your future ditty is helpful). There’s a political aspect as well. In countries with authoritarianism or dictatorship, peripheral directors who shoot on ‘ideologically correct themes’ or light vaudeville films receive funding. Documentary cinema suffers especially.

A short film can be shot on a phone, vibrations and non-Hollywood picture quality are not punishable. Animation and many technical tricks and techniques can be used. As winners of the ‘Best Belgian Student Short – 2024’ – young directors Nastia Korkia and Vlad Fishez ‘Dreams about Putin’ – Nastia and Vlad work in animation and collage form with images, statements and caricatures of the president shared on social networks by Russians after their country’s invasion of Ukraine. Nastya has a philological degree from Moscow State University and studied film production under Bakur Bakuradze at the Moscow School of New Cinema. Her film is ‘an essay on the subconscious, nightmares and hopes of many Russians, depicting the dreams they share on social networks, which create a disturbing, sometimes dryly comic film about the current state of Russian society.’

My conclusion – especially student films – short films are cool and should be watched! To be taken into the future….