HollyShorts 2023

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HollyShorts 2023 – A Brief Recap of the Festival

HollyShorts 2023, the 19th edition of the HollyShorts Film Festival, was the first one I’ve ‘attended’ thanks to its continued dual format – screening both in-person in Hollywood and virtually. The festival offers a huge range of short films from all corners of the globe of all lengths (from a couple minutes to just under the 40 minute Oscar qualifying mark).

The Experience

HollyShorts offers films for every short film fan. However, navigating the huge range of short films on offer is difficult. Unlike other online film festivals, Hollyshorts’ catalogue was separate from the online viewing platform. So, while you could use the catalogue to find films you wanted to watch, there was no way to correlate this with the search function on the Bitpix virtual platform. This was partly because all the shorts were packaged into groups of 5-8 films on the Bitpix platform with no tags as to which films the package contained. So instead of being able to search for and locate a film on the Bitpix site, it forced you to click into each film package to see what films it contained. With over 400 films in the HollyShorts 2023 edition, it took a lot of time to find what you wanted to see. The best solve for this would be to experience HollyShorts ‘blind’ by going into the festival without having anything noted as a must watch.

The Films

Going into the HollyShorts festival without knowing what you’re watching isn’t a bad thing as the quality of the films is strong. Unlike festivals that focus on feature-length films and have a few short films thrown in, HollyShorts focuses on short films, which helps drive the quality of their short film slate. It’s not surprising that this festival is a short-film qualifier for the Academy Award Short prizes (no matter how much credibility you give to the ultimate nominations). Here’s our top 10 from the festival:

  1. Please Hold the Line (Malaysia)
  2. Random Check (Kuwait)
  3. You’re Happy, It’s OK (Malaysia)
  4. Europe by Bidon (France)
  5. Broken (Denmark/Iran)
  6. Ciela (Mexico)
  7. Yellow (Afghanistan)
  8. Every Day After (Philippines)
  9. Iwayo Mi (Nigeria)
  10. The Sons of God (Mexico)

It was great to see two very good shorts from Malaysia, a country that doesn’t always get the film-making recognition it should. Please Hold the Line mixes gangster themes with abortion whilst You’re Happy it’s OK depicts a really heart-warming inter-generational relationship. Random Check, Europe by Bidon, and Broken all depict different immigrant experiences, with the latter two employing some unique animated styles worth checking out. The rest of the top 10 feature a magic octopus (Ciela), delusional colonists (The Sons of God), and waiting for war (Yellow). I wouldn’t be surprised to see any of these on the Oscar shortlists for the 2024 nominations.

Conclusion

HollyShorts is a film festival worth your time for two reasons. Firstly, the quality; even our least favorite films were well produced, setting the festival aside from its feature-film focused competitors. Secondly, you don’t have to be in Los Angeles to enjoy it; HollyShorts is available wherever in the World you are. Look out for it’s 20th edition in August 2024.