The monumental South by Southwest (SXSW) festival, a cultural hub that showcases rising talent within the creative arts, commenced its inaugural year in London, marking the festival’s European debut. Taking place primarily in Shoreditch, East London, from June 2nd to 7th, it proved to be a successful week, with even the King of England joining in on the action.
While there were a variety of magnificent feature films on offer, short films are typically overlooked when crafting a festival watchlist. More often than not, we are watching the future of cinema when consuming shorts. Directors such as Paul Thomas Anderson, David Lynch, and Agnès Varda, to name a few, dabbled in this form before breaking out into their feature-length narrative debuts.
Here are seven shorts by rising filmmakers, curated around the theme “Truth + Lies,” featured at this year’s SXSW festival in London.
Hippopotami (2025)
Hippopotami delves into how formative adults’ truthfulness can be to a child in their early years. Chinese filmmaker Lin Jianjie’s short film, which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival last year, centers around a young girl whose father promised her to go and see the hippopotami at the local zoo, only to be disappointed and taken to an art exhibit instead. The cold, stark cinematography within the exhibit juxtaposes the vibrancy and child-like joy that emanates from visiting somewhere like a zoo, striking audiences who cannot help but feel sorry for the child. Jianjie leaves much to interpretation, alluding to other half-truths being told to the girl, which, at times, is difficult to keep up with in an otherwise interesting narrative.
The Death of a Hero (2024)
Swedish actress turned writer-director Karin Franz Körlof explores the consequences of believing outlandish claims in The Death of a Hero. When a small town community gathers to watch a young man (William W. Wåhlström) do a handstand on the top of a church, people speculate whether he will die, as he stated he would. Filmed as a mockumentary, this hysterical short deconstructs how modern society treats these shocking moments as spectacles rather than taking them as real-life implications. From the couple setting up early to ensure they have the best seats to the two drunk men claiming they know it’s wrong but are still watching from a distance, the audience cannot help but be enthralled by the comedic relief used to mask the dread of the situation.
Route 310 (2025)
British comedy documentarian Julia Mervis investigates the new bus route 310 and its online controversy in her fourth short film. Mervis hilariously explores how hatred and false narratives are perpetuated online for the supposedly “Jewish” bus route and how that translates into the offline world. Mervis’s deadpan dialogue deliveries and the introspective, ad-hoc conversations with the general public radiate a distinctive British charm. While there felt like a lack of closure for the original premise, Mervis, in true documentary fashion, follows the story to weird and wonderful avenues, making it a thoroughly entertaining watch.
Someone Special (2024)
Someone Special follows the story of Lisa (George Ka), a lovestruck girl whose white lie festers out of control after she matches with Xuân (Hoàng Anh Duchatelet) on a dating app, telling Xuân that she can speak Vietnamese although she can’t. This seven-minute-long short packs in so much heart, humor, and plausibility to a situation, utilizing a vibrant and dynamic style of 2D animation that perfectly toes the line between realism and exaggeration. The 24-year-old French director and animator Alice Gervat, who made this short as her graduation film at École des Arts Décoratifs – PS, launches her filmography with a high.
My Mother is a Cow (2024)
Selected for the Venice Film Festival in 2024, Brazilian documentary writer Moara Passoni transitions into writing and directing for her second drama short, My Mother is a Cow. From the beginning, we see young child Mia (Luisa Bastos) torn away from her mother and sent to the Wetlands of Brazil due to political conflict. Through her sorrowful gaze, Bastos magnificently conveys the inner-conflict of resentment towards her abandonment and the bereavement of her mother, whom she has had no contact with since being separated. Passoni laces the narrative with harrowing yet beautiful metaphors of how Mia is forced to transition from a child to a young adult due to her situation. Her menstruating for the first time is just one example that reinforces just how heartbroken we feel for her throughout the short.
Party Animal (2025)
Ali Gill’s Party Animal is an incredibly relevant and compelling narrative short that dissects what it means to be wrongly labelled as a conspiracy theorist, told from the lens of barber Dustin (Nabhaan Rizwan). After cutting the hair of breakout politician Reuben (Edward Baker-Duly), Dustin finds himself in a difficult position where he is forced to keep a deep secret or be accused of running a smear campaign against him. Gill captures Dustin’s slow descent into madness through his interactions with close friends and family, members of the public, and himself, reconciling whether he believes himself anymore. Rizwan’s performance is thought-provoking and intense, making Party Animal all the more fascinating to watch.
The Man In The Rectangle (2025)
Writer and director Ali Heraize, inspired by Nathan Fielder, challenges the bounds of reality when running a social experiment on photographers, toying with the idea of AI replacing their jobs. The experiment is conducted with the help of James R. Cowley, who plays James Borges, a fake photographer whose entire backstory and portfolio were generated by an LLM. At a time when AI is ever prevalent yet largely unregulated, Heraize lets the photographers formulate their own opinions while providing them a neutral stance on the tool itself. I have trouble reconciling with anything that takes a non-negative stance on AI in the creative field, but it’s undeniable that this short sparks a much-needed conversation about its use.
List Courtesy of Nandita Joshi
Feature Image Courtesy of Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Arts Décoratifs (ENSAD) via Unifrance