The 2025 short-film selection shifts our perspective on the world

Through the fantastic, the absurd, the queer, the mysterious, and the political, each of the 10 competing short films finds its own perspective to better reflect reality.

While reconnecting with oneself is often associated with nature, it is in the midst of the carnival that the protagonist of Samba Infinito reengages with his childhood. Leonardo Martinelli takes us to an urban journey that is both festive and melancholic. Equally unexpectedly, Yumi Jung’s Glasses, opens with a visit to an optician, the starting point of an inner voyage that awakens all the senses.

Róisín Burns’ intriguing, musical, and social fable invites us to delve into the past to see the present more accurately. Wonderwall revisits the golden age of Britpop through the Blur-Oasis feud, as seen through the eyes of a 9-year-old child. With Critical Condition, Mila Zhulktenko sets her camera in the newsroom of the Ukrainian newspaper Independent in 1957. A journey through time that questions exile - so distant and yet so close.

Extravagance as a challenge to gender roles could well be a pursuit of Ananth Subramaniam’s Bleat!, where a pregnant billy goat is placed at the center of a village, somewhat unprepared to receive him. A deeply subtle and absurd bleat. In Erogenesis, Xandra Popescu imagines a dystopian universe in which women explore pleasure, while men bulk up in vain. These visions oscillate between the serious and the playful, conjuring up a most peculiar tale.

Cinema also grapples with morals, and the characters in Vasile Todonca’s Alișveriș have very few. They force a woman to give up everything, in an unrelenting race toward hardship. As for Carmen Leroi, she tackles the many ethical dilemmas faced by the young woman in Free Drum Kit. An act of generosity turns into a delightfully eventful moral comedy.

Lastly, L’mina offers a striking exploration of the Jerada mines of Morocco. Randa Maroufi reconstructs a fascinating artificial world in which workers testify to the harshness of their conditions. The final voyage of this competition takes place onboard a train, led by the spellbinding God is shy. At the intersection of genre film and existential drama, Jocelyn Charles takes us on a hallucinatory ride at 300km/h.

The special screening is tinged with sweet nostalgia. Agnès Patron evokes childhood in To the Wood, where the forest becomes a character in its own right in a game of hide-and-seek between brother and sister. In Eraserhead in a Knitted Shopping Bag, Lili Koss walks in David Lynch’s footsteps, following a teenager’s chaotic journey as she is determined to find a - very special - film. To conclude, Guil Sela, winner of the 2024 competition, takes us on a stroll around Paris during the Olympics in his irresistible No Skate!.

La Semaine de la Critique will continue to support the filmmakers of this year’s selection. Each talent will have the opportunity to join the Next Step programme towards making their first feature film.