These days the only way to appreciate short films on a big screen is to seek them at film festivals. Part of the pleasure of attending short film screenings at festivals is identifying the signs of special talents among the works of the emerging filmmakers. Indeed, the medium of short film is perceived, most often, as the medium of the calling cards, as, apart from few exceptions like Spike Jonze, they have rarely been used by established filmmakers. This collection of German short films curated by the Cambridge Film Festival consists of four works from recent students at the German Film and Television Academy, and an animation by an independent filmmaker. 

AT THE DOOR/AN DER TÜR (Miriam Bliese, 5 mins) is a concise and minimalist drama. It focuses on two characters, a divorced couple. The man is waiting at the front of the door of her apartment block, in a wintry condition, communicating with her via the intercom. This is their stage. The performance is realistic. The conversation is banal but somehow hints at repressed feelings and a long history. This short scene from a domestic drama indicates an impending story to happen, and would make a superb opening move for a feature length film. Overall, this short has the feeling of having absorbed the work of Asghar Farhadi, the Oscar winning Iranian director.

COME AND PLAY/SPIEL MIT MIR (Daria Belova, 30 mins) is a superb technical achievement. It has beautiful, grainy black and white photography and ingenious sound design. However, the symbolism it contains, or, perhaps even forces onto the audience, feels overbearing and too eager to shock and disturb. At 30 minutes’ running time, the film feels somehow overindulgent. It starts promisingly as we follow a boy play acting in the woods. He becomes lost in his world. The reality of his world then collapses into a series of surreal images indicating the brutal history of German past.

ELISABETH (Katharina Woll, 19 mins) is the most filmic of the selection. Woll explores entanglement and sexual attraction across an age divide, between a writer and a rougher, far younger person. It feels like a scaled HAROLD and MAUDE. The drama is constructed in a very straightforward manner. It uses an efficient and believable symbol of old age, loneliness and senility haunting the writer character. It contains some thoughtful sound design works, especially in the dancing scene, where the music gradually fills the room.

THIEVES/DIEBE (Lauro Cress, 7 mins) observes, in a non-judgemental way, two thieves stealing clothes and the aftermath of their action. The bodies and the faces of the actors are arranged to reflect the social condition they live in. Their emotional states are hinted by the small things they do. It is a satisfying work. A mini-Dardenne brothers.

TORTURING/QUÄLEN (Rebecca Blöcher, 4 mins) is a stop-motion animation of a drawing of a girl moving through a stack of papers. It has very good production design and a nice sounding soundtrack. The film is described as being based on a poem, which seems to be about the act of keeping a secret that actually liberates the inner self. How this was conveyed in the film was somehow elusive, apart from, perhaps, in the final frame.

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