As the pre-screening credit roll and accompanying statement (“our credits tell the story”) boasts, graduates of the National Film & Television School’s filmmaking courses tend to go places. As well as all the cross discipline feature work they advertised recent graduates having been involved in, the prominence of their graduates in festival and award circuits seems to be hard to miss. At the recent BAFTA ceremony, both short film awards, live action and animated, were won by (female) NFTS graduates. (Nina Gantz for Edmond and Caroline Bartleet for Operator.)

We checked out the graduating short films they presented a few weeks back, to try to look out for names and films that are likely to continue to crop up as the year develops.

Most impressive perhaps was Nothing’s Going To Change My World, an immaculately photographed short film directed by Philip James McGoldrick. The short, like many in the programme, feels less a condensation of a larger idea than a story written specifically for a short length format, and is all the more compelling for it. The narrative, both tender and unsettling, follows the sexual discomfort of a teen who finds himself thrust into struggling with the form and function of his own desires after he mights a girl who takes a shine to him at a LAN gaming party. McGoldrick evokes the feel of the 1990s strongly through smart set design and costuming (think scrappy 90s denim, big white tees and a lot of oversized computer monitors), something that is complimented by Luciana Riso’s luscious, textured film-grainy cinematography that roams around the rooms, streets and fairground of the film dreamily, capturing a world without adults, one of unending evenings and reckless abandon. The whole thing feels very much of a time and place, but with concerns (the role of developing technologies in relation to confused, complicated desires) that feel much more modern.

Also strong in the fiction group – Malou Reymann’s perhaps slightly too consciously arthouse, but similarly beautifully shot The Return. A rich chiaroscuro black and white abstract horror piece, The Return consists largely of low depth of field, high contrast, often unrecognisable compositions, but somehow evokes a very specific sense of tone and mood, if not exact narrative coherence. Incredible sound design, a shrill mix of ambient harsh sound and a piercing soundtrack compliments the disquieting and beautiful visuals, meaning Remann’s film leaves a mark – jarring and unpleasant by design.

Likely to be popular going forward, a short film about one girl’s unceasing love for her father. Sweet Maddie Stone sounds like an endearing drama about a father-daughter relationship, but goes much farther beyond this typical theme. Maddie Stone is a young girl who loves her father dearly, yes, but she is also a deeply troubled adolescent afflicted with the weight of the responsibility she feels to keep her father at home and out of prison. In keeping with the satirical humor behind the title, the only thing that’s “sweet” about Maddie Stone is the candy in her pocket that she sells to her schoolmates like drugs. Through her actions she is only trying to bail her father out of jail yet her behavior will only cause her to end up in the same cell he is trapped within. It’s this grim reality behind the plotline that creates the emotional twinges that are cleverly embedded within the humor of the film to create a well-constructed narrative arc. The character of Maddie Stone truly comes alive through this short, with much praise to Jessica Barden’s unflinching performance.

Another highlight, MIA, from Maria Martinez Bayona, was also a kind of horror. One with maternal fears and concerns at its core. In it, a pregnant woman undergoes an emergency birth (at night, in the middle of the nowhere, facing a mysterious fox, a nod to Lars Von Trier’s Antichrist perhaps?) before watching her child grow up rapidly and at random intervals, constantly challenging and confusing her maternal instincts and revealing the insecurities therein. With several child actors playing different iterations of her daughter; broad, difficult themes; a timeline that jumps at will; this was an ambitious choice for a graduating short. An extremely strange film, where its never clear what is event and what is fantasy, what is literal and what is metaphor, Martinez Bayona directs her high-concept short with impressive confidence and a keen visual eye.

In the documentary section, there were a few standouts too. You Can’t Hide From The Truth, from A.a.V. Amasi was a touching film about a father and son struggling to make do making music in Zimbabwe. Early on, the duo are seen busking to large audiences, playing great music, but never receiving any tips for their efforts. In one of the more uncomfortable moments, the boy, malnourished and exhausted, continues to drum past the point of exhaustion while his punters, who have no more money than he does, will him on verbally but without remuneration. Realising the problems of Zimbambe’s economic and political situation without her specifically referring to them, You Can’t Hide From The Truth shows a national situation through the most intimate of approaches.  A well shot, tightly edited story led by two very compelling lead subjects, Amasi follows the pair through their struggles, ending with the father and his old recording band putting together a new record, the studio time funded by a last chance, obviously crippling loan. The son isn’t chosen as the drummer on the album, but finds a way to step up his make his mark on the project anyway.

Also gently affecting, Miriam Ernst’s The Sunflower Inn, about a restaurant staffed by waiters with downs syndrome. One of the longer films in the programme, The Sunflower Inn spends a lot time getting to know the staff of the restaurant it portrays, most of whom prove natural filmic subjects, unassumingly performative and frequently hilarious. Ernst achieves the difficult thing of poking fun at her subjects without betraying their trust, and captures nicely the dynamic between the managerial staff who run the establishment and the workers they are training, as well as showing what the restaurant does for the families of the afflicted in terms of providing purpose to those working there and relief for those who get time away from care. The film is a bit clumsy formally, Ernst acting as cinematographer as well as director, but shows that she has an affinity for capturing people and personalities naturalistically, which is more important than formal qualities at this stage.