Re: Frame at AUT: A Programme of Seven Award-Winning Short Films

nothsa
18 hours ago
2 min read

On 11 September, NOYIFF will bring Re: Frame to AUT for a free evening of seven award-winning short films from Belgium, Russia, New Zealand, Taiwan, Ukraine, Belarus/Russia and Vietnam, followed by an industry sharing session.

At first glance, these films seem to have little in common. One follows three strangers on a night in Brussels; another imagines a dying village where a ferryman carries the living toward an island for the dead. There is a post-apocalyptic search for a charging cable, a final film made by five teenagers before their hometown disappears, and a question about whether the reality we trust is only a fraction of what is truly there.

That contrast is the point.

This Re: Frame programme brings together stories in which ordinary life is pushed slightly — or sometimes violently — out of balance. Family becomes a trap. A desired future becomes a frightening decision. A familiar place begins to disappear. A private lie becomes impossible to keep. Across very different places, languages and cinematic styles, these films ask what people do when the world they know no longer feels secure.

The programme opens with The Alley Cats from Belgium, directed by Víctor Sagristà, Maëlle Grand Bossi and Elisabeth Silveiro. Set across one night, it follows three strangers whose hidden lies begin to surface. Do Whatever, by Russian director Farid Aziz, turns the ties of family into a tense confinement: two people are trapped together, but only one wants to get out.

From New Zealand, Leo Stuart Allan’s Dog Days finds a strangely human stake in an apocalyptic landscape. After the end of the world, one man risks everything for something absurdly ordinary: a charging cable. The film sits beside Moment of Choice from Taiwan, directed by Chang Huai-yu and Chang Yung-han, where a dream job, an unexpected pregnancy and a difficult decision begin to take on a monstrous form.

Olena Pawlidi’s Ukrainian short 1% takes a more unsettling turn, asking whether the reality we rely on may only be a tiny part of what exists. In The Ferryman, directed by Christina Lebedzeva and produced across Belarus and Russia, a ferryman carries the living toward an island reserved for the dead — an image that lingers somewhere between myth, grief and departure.

The evening closes with Heading West from Vietnam, directed by Sulla (Ngan) Nguyen. Five teenagers make one final film before the place they call home disappears forever. It is a story about friendship and loss, but also about filmmaking itself: the instinct to record something before it is gone.

Short films can move quickly between worlds, but their impact often remains long after the screen goes dark. In a single evening, this programme travels from intimate domestic tension to apocalyptic survival, from questions of identity and reality to the fragile relationship between people and the places they call home.

Re: Frame is NOYIFF’s free campus screening series, created to bring international independent cinema into shared public spaces. The programme is open to students, emerging filmmakers and anyone curious to encounter cinema beyond the familiar.