LFF25 Shorts: Are You Kidding?
Overall, the ARE YOU KIDDING? strand of short films at London Film Festival 2025 has (for the most part) a commanding understanding of tone, pitching the collection into a tradition of morbid, dark and absurd humour.
Category Archives: Reviews
Left-Handed Girl
Equal parts comical and concerning, LEFT-HANDED GIRL is about resilience in a man’s world, with a five-year-old’s innocent questions shattering illusions and bringing about change.
The Smashing Machine
THE SMASHING MACHINE is an accomplished enough film, but the narrative seems to be all exploratory jabs and no haymaker. Safdie’s film skips deftly around several cliches, but fails to use that fancy footwork to advance something memorable of its own.
One Battle After Another
Paul Thomas Anderson’s proven filmmaking ability makes ONE BATTLE AFTER ANOTHER a technically accomplished picture that is gripping and entertaining, taking sides in the battle for history without losing its capacity for doubt.
From Ground Zero
If any short contains the thesis of presenting the Gazan anthology FROM GROUND ZERO together, it is arguably a line from Mustafa Al-Nabih’s OFFERINGS: “We know they had a past, dreams, a life, and a future”.
Together
TOGETHER makes an ambitious leap towards heady metaphors, but fails to fuse itself to an otherwise exciting and provocative emerging canon in horror cinema.
Put Your Soul on Your Hand and Walk
PUT YOUR SOUL ON YOUR HAND AND WALK is not a neutral film by any stretch of the imagination, but it should not be. Farsi’s documentary is urgent, heart-wrenching, and deeply personal, profiling a single life among the tens of thousands lost too soon.
The Life of Chuck
Mike Flanagan is no stranger to adapting Stephen King’s work, but like King himself, he’s tended to stick to horror. THE LIFE OF CHUCK represents a foray into King’s more literary work and, with its formally experimental structure and its genuinely life-affirming joyfulness, also represents a renewed confidence for Flanagan in his own writing.
Materialists
MATERIALISTS finds Céline Song widening her cinematic lens beyond the tender intimacy of her debut PAST LIVES. This time, she offers a sharper, more scornful critique on modern romance and personal branding.
Weapons
Anchored by layered, messy characters, WEAPONS delivers both fear and laughter but the resolution is less enterprising than the initial idea. The performances are undoubtedly entertaining, but audiences are likely to be split over whether the conclusion and final approach are worthy of them.