This year’s BFI Flare short film programme is a delightfully varied collection of shorts curated into seven different strands. With 38 short films available to watch for free on BFI Player throughout the duration of the festival (until 28th March) audiences are spoiled for choice. Although as film lovers we are desperately missing the physical spaces and communities at the heart of exhibition, the adaption of film festivals, including BFI Flare, to online spaces has meant that more films are reaching audiences beyond London (which as a Glasgow-based collective we like to see!). We took a dive into the short film programme and put together a list of our top picks.
1. The Cost of Living (Alice Trueman, 2021).
Image: BFI Flare 2021
Lily is a perfect capitalist. She wakes up to a clinically neat house, her smart watch informs her how efficiently she has slept and her meals for the week are already boxed up into little containers in the fridge. Everything from her step count to her breathing is impeccably controlled. But when Death appears outside her work one day in the form of an irresistible woman, the norm is shaken up. For the first time Lily is encouraged to live. Perhaps what Black Mirror would look like if it were hilarious, The Cost of Living is a delightful satire on the relationship between capitalism and heteronormativity.
2. Pool Boy (Luke Willis, 2021)
Image: BFI Flare 2021
A wealthy cisgender man confronts his feelings for a non-binary person, Star, who works as a pool cleaner in his house. The two strike up an intimate romance when he begins drawing sketches of Star, but the presence of heteronormative frat friends threatens to keep them apart. Beautifully shot, Pool Boy gives us an optimistic glance at queer love and joy.
3. From A to Q (Emmalie El Fadli, 2020)
Image: BFI Flare 2021
Emmalie El Fadli’s follow up to her short film The Date (2018), which is available to watch on Amazon Prime, demonstrates the filmmaker’s pledge to make films with positive lesbian representation. If you’re looking for a teen lesbian love story that will warm your heart then look no further than From A to Q. An anxious teenaged girl begins to pull away from her life-long best friend when she begins to have feelings for her. Equipped with charming humour and a perfectly executed dream sequence where the girls dance together to Taylor Swift’s “Lover”, From A to Q is a delightful breath of fresh air.
4. Cosmopolitan (Moran Nakar, 2020)
Image: BFI Flare 2021
Sexuality and race intersect in this short film based on the real-life experiences of Koby K. Tarakai, an Ethiopian LGBTQ activist. When Jason tries to enter a gay nightclub to meet a date, he is met with racial prejudice by the club’s bouncers. A reminder that there is yet prejudices within the LGBTQ+ community, Cosmopolitan is a timely and important watch.
5. All I Need Is a Ball (Elena Molina, 2020)
Image: BFI Flare 2021
This short documentary follows the mission of Paloma, a lesbian freestyler, who is creating a female league of female freestylers in Spain. Before her campaign, Paloma was the only woman freestyler in Spain (compared to around a hundred men) but as the film shows, her efforts and engagement with young women through social media platforms and tutorials have encouraged more and more young women to learn the skill. Although not free of backlash, Paloma’s trailblazing efforts are smashing gendered stereotypes.
6. Victoria (Daniel Toledo Saura, 2020)
Image: BFI Flare 2021
Set in a beautifully designed florist shop, Victoria captures a poignant moment between a couple who have separated after one of them transitions. Ordinary parental problems go beyond gender and sexuality in this tender portrayal of a trans woman. Drawing metaphorically on the Victoria plant which transitions naturally, director Daniel Toledo Saura poetically demonstrates self-acceptance and empathy.
7. Kind Of (Noah Schamus, 2020)
Image: BFI Flare 2021
While preparing to have their friends over for brunch, a trans masculine couple quarrel about their consensually non-monogamous relationship. Filmmaker Noah Schamus gives audiences a refreshing look at a modern relationship which refuses to be confined by neither gender nor society’s compulsory monogamy. With its incredibly sweet tone, Kind Of successfully explores questions of identity and desire.
8. The Night Train (Jerry Carlsson, 2020)
Image: BFI Flare 2021
Jerry Carlsson encapsulates the urgency of youthful desire perfectly in this short which follows a young man who spots another handsome man across from him on the night train. The moment the two lock eyes is a heart-stopping one. The setting of the overnight train is a stroke of genius, transforming a mundane journey into a vessel for unexplored and fleeting erotic desire.
BFI Flare is currently taking place online until 28th of March. All short films are available to watch for free on BFI Player for the duration of the festival.
Words by Rosie Beattie
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