Awesome Short Films

This short film by Santiago Menghini and a team of talented artists follows a pair of smugglers who must traverse a dangerous border under cover of night while transporting a hostage. Made using Unreal Engine, Rally is a tense and exciting mini-movie that also shows off what a modern 3D engine can do when it comes to lighting and atmosphere.

Athlete Laura Marino takes us on an amazing adventure as she leaps off a bridge in Paris and lands underwater in another place. In Escape, the pro cliff jumper visited shipwrecks, a sunken village, and other enchanting locales. The film was written, directed, produced, and edited by Marino and Mathieu Brulard, and shot entirely on GoPro action cameras.

This animated short film by Luke Etcheverry takes inspiration from the Bloodhound supersonic race car. It follows the story of a driver, a high-speed test drive that goes wrong, and his resolve to get back on his high-horsepower horse and try again. The 16-bit anime pixel art style makes it that much better.

This artfully animated short film by filmmaker Kei Kanamori took home Silver in the 51st Student Academy Awards. Its concept is simple, but its execution is sublime – as a magical character transforms folded sheets of CG-animated paper into living plants and creatures. Think Fantasia, but with paper.

To celebrate Monument Valley 3, Netflix and Ustwo Games released this animated short that builds on the style of the artful puzzle game. The short drops us onto a mysterious island where Sula is on a quest to get to a towering lighthouse to send a signal of hope to everyone on the planet. We loved seeing this universe fleshed out in three dimensions.

It takes good technology and clever prompt engineering to produce quality generative AI content. Director Simon Valentine, writer Erlend Loe, artist Edmond Yang, and editor Alex Holm used AI tech to make this short film about a death row inmate’s unexpected final wish. They created the entire stop-motion style film in less than 48 hours. (Thanks, Rob!)

Man Star Trek fans thought Captain Kirk didn’t get a proper send-off when he died in Star Trek: Generations. This emotional short film from OTOY and director Carlos Baena uses de-aging tech to bid a proper farewell to the Captain – and Spock. The nearly dialogue-free film was created with help from William Shatner and the Nimoy estate for the Roddenberry Archive.

Xi Chengzhuo’s animated film for GOBELINS Paris animation school takes us on a lonely journey through space as a rookie astronaut realizes there’s no coming home from a spacewalk. The artful character designs and backgrounds are as hauntingly beautiful, and we love how it was made to appear as a continuous take without edits.

It’s 1962, and NASA has just sent a monkey into space. But just as Beppo the Astro-monkey is about to return to Earth, he gets some bad news. This hilarious short turned up on this weekend’s Saturday Night Live with host John Mulaney as the mission’s flight director. From writer Dan Bulla, the warped mind behind 2022’s Meatballs sketch.

AI tech has been used to make plenty of digital garbage. But in the hands of a skilled artist, generative AI can be used like other tools in a paintbox to produce something extraordinary. MetaPuppet’s dreamlike short film Mnemonade is one such example. The film follows an elderly woman piecing together the memories of her life as time ticks away. (Thanks, Rob!)

A king hires a freelance knight to take care of his dragon problem, but he just can’t satisfy his demanding boss. This amusing animated short by Luciano A. Muñoz Sessarego and Tumblehead might remind creative folks of what it’s like to deal with a client who doesn’t know what they want until they see it. (Thanks, Rob!)

“Your task is simply to… survive!” The two-faced Decepticon Starscream is assigned to a solo mission. Thinking that it’s another attempt by Megatron to foil the Autobots, he quickly reverts to his high and mighty rhetoric. But will he be brought back down to earth and eat his words? 87render and their friends got together to create this great homage to Transformers.

(PG-13: Language) A group of outlaws attempts to pull off a heist while wearing the latest generation of digital mask technology. This low-budget short film by Glen Vivaris and team started as a modern take on Point Break, but the deepfake faces are only the tip of the AI iceberg in this thought-provoking and entertaining science fiction mini-movie.

(Flashing images) Animator Don Herzfeldt’s engrossing 21-minute animated short ME is well worth the price of admission. In its creator’s own words, “It’s a story about narcissism. It’s a story about pain. It’s also about everyone we know.” Despite losing its original music a year into production, the final product and its rhythmic score are a perfect pairing.

We’ve seen a LEGO machine that could make pancakes, so the idea of a brick-built cake bakery isn’t that far-fetched. But Tomosteen made their LEGO cake factory using stop-motion animation. The fanciful facility is run by a team of tiny cats, who surprisingly don’t lap up the batter before it can be baked in the LEGO brick oven.

(PG-13: Language) A couple moves into their first home together, only to find that the place has a bizarre… addition? Flaw? You may think that Eric Kissack’s short film plays its hand too early, or that you can see what’s coming. But it’s a wonderful look at what happens when two opposing yet equally legitimate points of view both win.