Highlights from Canberra Short Film Festival 2022

A wide range of incredible short films across genre and form

Canberra Short Film Festival is dedicated to showcasing a wide range of incredible short films across genre and form and it’s back for 2022.

I recently attended the ‘Festival Party’ screening hosted at Smith’s Alternative because I was lucky enough that one of my films was on the program. I directed Picture Perfect which is part of the Fragments digital series and it was so cool to share it with an audience for the first time!

Here are some of my favourite films from that screening.

Inspire Me dir. Sophie Saville (Documentary, NSW)

Inspire Me is a funny, satirical and heartfelt documentary film which follows comedian Madeleine Stewart as she tries to become an inspiring disabled person. It was commissioned through the Screen NSW Screenability Filmmakers Fund and had its debut at Sydney Film Festival earlier this year.

As the film explores the concept of ‘inspiration porn’ and what it means to be a disabled person, Stewart chats to paralympians Johnathan Goerlach and Ellie Cole and writer and advocate Hannah Diviney about how to become inspiring.

Highly Commended in both the ‘National’ and ‘Documentary’ categories at CSFF, Inspire Me is a visually entertaining film which covers a lot in its 12 minute run time. Stewart is a charismatic and engaging ‘host’ of the story and director Sophie Saville’s colourful visuals match her enthusiasm well.

Karl Heinz dir. Andrew Robb (Canberra)

I’ve been to many film festivals and I am often surprised by the absence of comedy films. Not that there’s anything wrong with drama – I love a good drama film – but after quite a few serious films in a row, a funny film can feel like a refreshing change of pace.

Karl Heinz is a comedy short which follows a man who has purchased an android to make up for the lack of features in his car. Karl Heinz is a sat nav, heated seat, stereo system and reverse parking system all in one.

Filmed entirely using a smartphone, director-writer-actor Andrew Robb has crafted a hilarious and uncomplicated story which is so effortlessly amusing in its absurdity. Accompanied by a great performance from Erich Wittenberg as Karl Heinz, the two make a fantastic duo.

FREE FALL dir. Emmanuel Tenenbaum (International, France)

If you haven’t got a spare 130 minutes to watch The Big Short, you can get the same effect from watching FREE FALL in just 19 minutes.

FREE FALL follows a young trader at a London bank who enters into the biggest trade of his life after seeing the first plane hit the World Trade Center on the morning of September 11, 2001.

The film packs a massive punch for its short run time and does a fantastic job of highlighting the dramatic irony that a successful ‘short’ against the market involves profiting off other people’s hardship. The script is tight, the performances are engaging and the cinematography is polished.