Two People Exchanging Saliva

"The story is constructed like a Swiss watch—you can't lose something without breaking another part of it."

When festival runtime convention told Natalie Musteata and Alexandre Singh their Oscar-nominated short Two People Exchanging Saliva was too long, they refused to blunt its edges. In our interview, the duo—an art historian and a visual artist turned filmmakers—break down the rigorous world-building, dual cinematic language and gunshot impact sound design behind their gloriously absurdist dystopian desire narrative.

Perfectly a Strangeness

"If the audience doesn't have space to imagine, space to breathe in a film, I'm just not interested."

Three donkeys. An unnamed desert. An abandoned observatory. And somehow, the cosmos. In Oscar-nominated documentary short Perfectly a Strangeness, filmmaker Alison McAlpine set out into the Atacama with a three-person crew, anamorphic lenses and radical patience, and returned with something that finds wonder in the unhurried gaze of animals and unexpected beauty in the inner machinery of billion-dollar telescopes.

Children No More: Were and are Gone

"There is something in the image of a child that is stronger than any words, any numbers, any names."

What began with 40 black-and-white photographs printed at home became a global vigil and Oscar-nominated short Children No More: Were and are Gone, made with a crew of three, no state funding, and no time to waste. Director Hilla Medalia joins DN to reflect on the visual ethics of filming grief, the urgency that replaced any possibility of waiting, and the uncomfortable truth about how human beings actually process scale and suffering.

Someday It Is

"My attempt was to portray her inner thoughts based on how she interacted with the three women she encounters. In each she can see an aspect of herself—what she could be or could’ve been. The way she responds to each is a pathway into her interior life."

In her Californian-sunlight "shutting off" drama Someday It Is, Carissa Gallo delves into the quiet tension of inner turmoil and external expectations, following a woman as she navigates her interior world and encounters other women, in a life that seems perfect but no longer feels like her own.

A Friend of Dorothy

"I don’t think you can ever imagine what an actor is going to do with your lines because the joy of it is when you have actors of the calibre of Miriam Margolyes, Stephen Fry, Alistair Nwachukwu and Oscar Lloyd, you’re looking at the top of acting talent and ability, and you never know what they’re going to offer."

Lee Knight shares how his experience as an actor came into play when writing and directing his Oscar-nominated debut short, A Friend of Dorothy. He also talks to us about the importance of creating a safe space on set in which his actors could thrive and working with Miriam Margolyes after originally writing the lead role with her in mind to tell the life-affirming story of a lonely widow befriending a young man who is isolated in his own way.