Kristonkiner

The idea of being trapped in a nightmare is a trope of the horror genre, explored in Parker Finn's short film "Laura Hasn't Slept", a short film that revolves around this question and that laid the groundwork for its passage to feature film in the successful Smile.

The short film starts in media res with the protagonist, Laura. (Caitlin Stasey) in the office of her therapist, the calm and kindly Dr. Parsons (Lew Temple). Laura is clearly not in a good state of mind, to the point that she has refused to sleep for several days, due to a recurring nightmare she has about a creepy smiling man who threatens to show her "his true face." The tension of the short is very well executed, slowly building as we learn more about Laura, her nightmares and the monster that haunts them.

This premise is by no means new, it combines the concept of avoiding sleep to avoid confronting a terrifying entity, with the theme of the stigmatization of mental illness in the horror genre. Titles like Them from 2002 come to mind, and above all, any film in the Freddie Krueger saga. With these precedents, the viewer instinctively knows what is to come and it seems inevitable, but the director shows a great ability to smoothly transition from one atmospheric level to the next. With that use of slow panoramas as an element of suspense, which the director has turned into a trademark of the house.

The idea of using the smile as the main concept in a horror film is not new, perhaps its oldest literary antecedent is the short story by H. G. Wells, "Pollock And The Porroh Man", in which terrible visions of a smiling head haunts an English expeditionary in the Sierra Leone of colonial imperialism in the 19th century. An overexploited concept, that year after year, there are constant revisions and variations, especially in the short film genre.

In short, Laura Hasn't Slept tells a brief but terrifying story, where she plays with the dichotomy of madness and demonstrates a good know-how to create tension and propose sequences with a captivating atmosphere.

*A more detailed review can be found on the youtube channel Kristonkino.

Le Pupille is a short film by Italian director Alice Rohrwacher (Lazzaro felice). A Christmas tale with a strong connection between reality and imagination, which follows the usual atmospheres of the Bolognese director and this time combines Dickensian with an ineffably Italian magical realism.

The script, as wittily told by the orphanage girls themselves, is a free adaptation of the Christmas letter, which the renowned writer Elsa Morante sent to her friend and literary critic, Goffredo Fofi. The short film builds the story around the anecdote told in the letter, respecting in part, the writer's own words, which in the form of a song, is interpreted by the pupils of the boarding school. Le pupille, a title that in Latin means precisely girls and where the director gives it that imaginative double meaning, with those eyes of the girls, moving freely in any direction, a detail shot that becomes the central message of the short film.

With Le pupille, Rohrwacher gives free rein to all his poetic notes, already present in his feature films, and signs a unique short film that seems to come from another era, with that 16 and 35 mm photography of marked grain, the work of his usual collaborator Hélène Louvart, visually reminiscent at times of Jack Cardiff's Black Narcissus for Powell & Pressburger. She also allows herself to pay tribute to slapstick comedy without complexes, with those accelerations in editing, underlining the fleeting moments of joy. But above all it pays homage to the Italian cinema, references such as the Tavianni brothers, the Vitoriode Sica-Cessare Zabatinni duo, or Pier Paolo Pasolini, maintaining the difficult balance of reality and fantasy, in the genre of Italian neo-magical realism.

Le pupille is a humane and moving story about rebellion, morality and purity at an early age and how our actions have unintended consequences, in the face of the emptiness of some traditions.

*A more detailed review can be found on the youtube channel Kristonkino.

Oscar winner "An Irish Goodbye" is a black comedy of sibling rivalry, with siblings who only have each other after the recent loss of their mother, a particularly Irish rural approach to grief .

Set in the rural Northern Irish countryside of County Antrim and tell us the reunion of the estranged McCaffrey brothers.

The sadness of the grieving process over the recent loss of their mother is accentuated by the wintry photography of the setting. Far from the emerald meadows typical of Ireland, these empty, melancholy landscapes are used to evoke the idea of rural isolation.

Turlough is the older brother, played by Seamus O'Hara, an actor we have seen in Game of Thrones and The Northman. Turlough, previously expatriated in London due to the loss of his father, has to take care of his younger brother Lorcan, who has an intellectual disability. Lorcan is played by James Martin, an actor the pair of directors discovered in the BBC's Ups & Downs. Fortunately, Lorcan's disability does not turn out to be a defining part of the script; instead, the core of the script is basically a sibling relationship.

The character of Lorcan, a headstrong farmer, turns out to be complex, mischievous and multifaceted, with some sharp dialogue towards his more reserved brother. Both have opposing desires as Lorcan sees his dreams of continuing to live and work on the family farm frustrated, because the pragmatic Turlough, wants to send him to live with his aunt at the other end of Ireland, to sell the farm and return to London. Something that alludes to the title of the short, to leave the party early, without warning.

The somewhat mouthy local parish priest, played brilliantly by Paddy Jenkins, takes it upon himself to assist the brothers with the final details of the wake and shows them a list of 100 unfulfilled wishes, which belonged to the boys' late mother. Lorcan takes it as an opportunity and will only agree to leave the farm once he and Turlough have fulfilled and completed each and every wish on their mother's list. Reluctantly, Turlough agrees to the deal, as a last tribute to his mother before selling the farm. By the way the short film has the bonus of having the voice of Michelle Fairley, known as Catelyn Stark in Game of Thrones, to provide the voice of the brothers' mother from beyond the grave.

Both always carry their mother's ashes with them on a posthumous journey of realization. The spirit of the classic Irish comedy is ingrained in this short film.

A touching escapist but at the same time acidic and elegiac story about brotherhood, about learning to share the burden of difficult moments and making the most of the time we have.

*A more detailed review can be found on the youtube channel Kristonkino.