OK/NOTOK

Pardeep Sahota speaks to DN about finding his own original interpretation of the dystopic corporate commodification of love, loneliness and an uncertain future in his genre bending, single-shot film OK/NOTOK.

Pun Intended

Born from a list of puns, Jack Turits charts how he wove a trio of archetypal stories into a cohesive whole for his absurd wordplay-led situational short Pun Intended, where language twists into irony and the bizarre becomes strangely human.

This week, the Directors Notes YouTube Channel hit a significant milestone of crossing 100,000 Subscribers! We’d like to thank all of the fabulous DN alum filmmakers who have shared their shorts on the channel with our new, growing audience, who have been tuning in every day to watch and comment on the films in our collection. If you’re not already, you should definitely join them and subscribe to the DN channel, if only so you can experience watching your favourite DN shorts in full wide-screen glory on your TV.

Our Top 12 Short Film Picks from Manchester Animation Festival 2025

From bold debuts to innovative festival favourites, as we’ve come to expect, Manchester Animation Festival’s eclectic short film selection was bursting with creativity — here are 12 unmissable picks to keep an eye out for from this year’s programme.

Game

From his decision to leave the band Beak> for filmmaking to self-funding the entire £150k debut feature through Invada Records, writer/producer Geoff Barrow (Portishead) and director John Minton take Directors Notes inside the "can do, will do" attitude of Invada Films' rave scene-set indie thriller debut Game. They also discuss casting Sleaford Mods' Jason Williamson, the calculated risk of filming actor/writer Marc Bessant suspended upside down for real, and why Geoff, a film composer, decided to use minimal score.