The Last Lap (Shorts Showcase)

Now this is a fine collection of short films with all sharing the characteristic of having an extended run time…and it’s easy to see why. These beauties need both the time and the attention of the audience as their rich narratives play with expectation, time, space, place and belonging. These shorts are among the best you’ll see anywhere, anytime – highly recommended and enormously rewarding. Ambitious stuff.

FILMS

Temple Crimes

Ian John Dixon

Singapore/2023/20min

Venturing into an overgrown graveyard, eleven-year-old Chinese boy, Bojing, transforms his fear of strangers into belief in the maturity of Ken, an escapee from Singapore’s maximum-security prison, Changi. But, having smuggled Ken to a nearby stone temple, Bojing soon discovers the truly criminal mind of his new dark mentor. Ultimately, however, it is the eleven-year-old Bojing who proves the greater hero and mentor…

I’m On Fire

Michael Spiccia

USA/2022/24min

It’s summer. Danny’s twelve, drifting into adolescence, just getting interested in girls, with no idea how to talk to them. He spends his days making mixtapes that he trades with his cousin Luca.

At home, his parents are in constant conflict. Their almost nightly fights are like background noise. Danny finds himself caught between his parents with no clear path to his own life.

Set over the course of a single week, “I’m on Fire” tells the story of a toxic marriage seen through the lens of a twelve-year-old boy, and the critical step he takes in his difficult path toward adulthood.

Finding Addison

Francisca Braithwaite

Australia/2023/30min

In the vibrant and carefree 90s, amidst the era of colourful scrunchies, patterned dresses and boomboxes that blear catchy tunes, two best friends, Isabelle and Lucy are inseparable, the epitome of teenage adventure. Always sporting friendship bracelets as a token of their unbreakable bond.

When Lucy and Isabelle’s crushes, Steve and John, invite the girls to “hang out,” the carefree days of innocent laughter and flirtatious glances take an unexpected turn. Isabelle suspects she may be pregnant, and with all the confusion and the consequences of revealing the truth to her parents, she conceals the secret growing within, confiding only in Lucy.

Fast forward 31 years, and the past, once thought well hidden, finally comes knocking at the door. The innocent baby, now a full-grown woman named Addison, has come in search of her birth mother.

Finding Addison interweaves the lives and timelines of five women: Isabelle, Lucy, Addison, Lynnie and Jewel, and as the story transitions between the past and present, we witness the unfolding narratives of these women, showcasing the struggles, sacrifices and secrets that have shaped their lives, whilst exploring friendship, identity, forgiveness, and the profound impact of hidden truths that reverberates through generations, leaving an undeniable mark on those involved.