THE BEST OF 2025 EDITION
Written by Jess Sweetman
Happy New Year from Festival Formula!
To wrap up 2025, I reached out to my colleagues on the FF Team to name their favourite short films of the year. Enjoy!
As an added bonus, if you would like to watch the shorts from last year’s best-of (where available), I’ve added the links to last year’s article so you can stream them from the page. Enjoy!
Katie Bignell, Founder and Film Festival Strategist
1 - qui part a la chasse (the hunted) by lea favre
”Whenever I talk about this film I just go cold. It’s got a fantastic sleight of hand in the middle where it just elevates to something so unnerving, and based on real events so very raw. Yet it shows a triumphant denouement and utilises animation to rewrite a better history. Everyone I talk to about this has the same response, and when myself and fellow judges saw it at Fantoche this year it was unanimous.”
2 - cattywampus by jono chanin
This film had me guffawing from the tight script and the stellar performances. Dropping a traditional heist film on its head it has charm, it has poignancy, and it oozes with confidence at holding the audience’s attention for 19mins. It goes to show that length of a film is irrelevant if you earn the audience’s attention. I saw this at Indy Shorts Film Festival.
3 - play hard by winter dunn
I’ve now seen this film at a few festivals but I first saw it at Palm Springs Shortfest. I instantly fell in love with the naturalism but also the intensity it captured. Bottling the frenetic nature of music and creativity, it delivers a delicate yet electric chemistry (that is hard enough to describe in real life, let alone explore on screen).
Ian Bignell - Strategist
1 - the singers by sam a. davis
This is a beautiful film which breaks down men’s mental health in a heartfelt singing competition.
2 - voiceless by samuel patthey
A wonderful animation that explores repetition, drug abuse, raving and eventually hope. It’s a treat for the eyes along with its pumping soundtrack.
3 - i could dom by madison hatfield
This is brilliantly funny look at a squeaky clean woman dating a submissive man and trying to be a dom when it’s not in her wheelhouse.
Mark Brennan - Festival Strategist & Liaison
1- i hate helen by katie lambert
This is a fantastic comedy with so much zip and style. It’s also a short I’ve been able to support this year wearing all three of my short film hats. Firstly, I was the strategist for the film at Festival Formula, then it was selected for this year’s Exit 6 Film Festival, and finally it was picked up by Directors Notes for its online premiere for which I got to interview director Katie Lambert about the making of the short. Find out more on my thoughts of the film plus my chat with Katie by checking out that interview here.
2- tortured artist by thomas laurance
This was another short selected for Exit 6 this year which was my personal favourite of the programme. The imagination, the style and the humour blew me away in the best possible way. It’s a fantastical piece of storytelling but centred around a very relatable plight to which any creative person can relate.
3- the man that i wave at by ben s. hyland
If you haven’t heard of this short film then you must have been living under a rock during 2025 as it’s screened and/or won at almost all the festivals out there - including Best Film at Exit 6. The success of the film has been a delight to see, in no small part because I am good friends with director Ben S. Hyland. His track record in comedy shorts is fantastic and this new entry to his portfolio is his best film yet, blending his customary humour with some twisty, sinister, sci-fi elements.
The film is not yet available online.
Esther Smith - Submissions Co-ordinator
1- no way back by tom turner
A man’s desire to go to war takes him from Edinburgh to fight on the frontlines in Ukraine. With discussions of mental health, addiction, and the desire to be something more, it’s a thought-provoking documentary that’ll stick with you.
2- shanti rides shotgun by charles frank
A snapshot documentary on a beloved driving instructor in New York City. This is a warm and lovely watch – it’s amazing to see how one woman can impact so many lives in a positive way. Everybody needs a Shanti.
New to the group, a man struggles to grasp the concept of frisbee – a brilliant comedy packing in all the laughs in just 5 minutes. For all my socially awkward people out there, it’s something we can (unfortunately) relate to.
jess sweetman - social media coordinator
1 - lloyd wong - unfinished by lesley loksi chan
Director Lesley Loksi Chan won the Golden Bear at this year’s Berlinale with her haunting and heartbreaking found-footage short, and rightly so. In the experimental film, we are introduced to Lloyd Wong, who is dying of AIDS. Much of the footage is from an unfinished cable access show where he shows the viewer how to install a medical port and talks about what it means to be a PWA in the 1980’s. I wept like a baby, emerged enraged and enriched by having spent a stolen moment with Lloyd.
2 - be somebody by michal toczek
Michał Toczek’s 26-min Polish drama explores poverty without being misery porn: history, without being bogged down; and love, without being sappy. It’s also dripping with on-point performances from its cast, especially lead actor Sebastian Stankiewicz, who can convey a universe with the tilt of his head.
3 - the blue diamond - sam fox
Fox’s culty horror is everything I look for in a film: it’s ridiculous, campy, and has a freaky cult in it. The short drips in neon, but it isn’t style over substance, rather there’s a dark undercurrent of weird parental relationships and a daughter trying to make it through the funeral of her terrible mother unscathed. This was a favourite at Final Girls Berlin this year, and I can see why.
