Coming of age is far from easy, as these competition-nominated films demonstrate. Growing pains and harrowing encounters are par for the course as we navigate the twisting road of identity, family and the inner workings of our developing brains. Our young characters attempt to figure themselves and the world out whilst on a psychedelic Scottish road trip, sloping around suburban London, or veering wildly into Japanese cosplay and the surprisingly competitive world of horse vaulting. You can’t self-actualise without a soundtrack, and music plays a vital role across this programme of loud, stroppy, colourful and always surprising shorts.
Sundance Award alumni Makoto Nagahisa returns with another tale of obsessive adolescent romance in Pisko The Crab Child Is in Love, and LSFF alumni Harry Plowden returns with a tale of British teenhood in All Gucci My Broski. Fiona O’Shaughnessy (Nina Forever, Utopia) stars as Mum in the aforementioned Highlands holiday from hell, The Möbius Trip.
27
Director Flóra Anna Buda, France 2023, 11 mins
The Möbius Trip
Director Simone Smith, UK 2023, 16 mins
Exceptional Tales from a Young Female Team: REDS
Director Tom Espinoza, 2022, Argentina, 14 mins
Highgate 2014
Director Teva Cheema, UK 2023, 19 mins
All Gucci My Broski
Director Harry Plowden, UK 2023, 13 mins
Pisko the Crab Child Is in Love
Director Makoto Nagahisa, Japan 2023, 18 mins
Total running time 91 mins
LONDON SHORT FILM FESTIVAL
LSFF Competition: This Must Be the Place
Sat 20 Jan 20:45
LSFF Competition: There Are New Suns
Wed 24 Jan 20:30
LSFF Competition: Growing Up in Public
Thu 25 Jan 20:45
British Short Films on Film
Fri 26 Jan 18:15
LSFF Competition: A Trick of the Light
Sat 27 Jan 20:40
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Programme notes and credits compiled by Sight and Sound and the BFI Documentation Unit
Notes may be edited or abridged
Questions/comments? Contact the Programme Notes team by email