British Short Film Awards shine the spotlight on Oscar hopefuls

Jacob Sarkisian
·7 min read
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The 2023 British Short Film Awards took place on Nov. 7 in an intimate ceremony at the Marylebone Theatre in London, hosted by Alex Zane. The night celebrated the best of this year’s British short films, with several of them qualifying for the Oscars and BAFTAs. Short film royalty were in attendance, including Slick Films founder Chris Overton, who won the Best Live Action Short Film Oscar in 2018 with Rachel Shenton for “The Silent Child.”

Gold Derby attended the warm, jovial ceremony, which is now in its third year. The ceremony featured a screening of “The Irish Goodbye,” which won Best Live Action Short at the Oscars earlier this year, along with an illuminating chat conducted by Alex Zane with the film’s directors Tom Berkeley and Ross White. Their new film, “The Golden West,” won Cinematography, Score, and Director.

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One of the night’s other winners was “Dog Run,” a short film that follows a man who tries to escape exploitation via his bond with a guard dog. Written and directed by Lorna Nickson Brown, the film features a fearsome performance from Paula Wharton, who won Best Supporting Actress at the night’s awards. We caught a word with both artists, with Nickson Brown hailing Wharton’s performance.

“Such a challenging role. She’s someone who, through most of the film, is effectively an abusive person, and we see her being very unpleasant. But Paula helped to really find a vulnerability to the character and understand her backstory without justifying it and making her likable or redeeming her in any way. We really understood why she did what she did. Paula was able to bring immense vulnerability and immense rage at the same, which is a really, really rare thing to see in an actress,” Nickson Brown said.

Some actors find darker roles fun to play — being bad can feel good, after all. But the abusive nature of Wharton’s character, May, was a challenging one for Wharton. “There were parts of it that were fun where I think she was less abusive but when it was the abuse it wasn’t fun. I was constantly apologizing to the cast at the end of every take. The challenge for me was channeling the anger of this person. The camaraderie, the experience, though  – when you have those challenging moments, you’re completely supported. The cast was fantastic when I had my worst moments as a character. It was a nice symbiosis,” Wharton said.

There are currently no plans to turn “Dog Run” into a feature or TV show as Nickson Brown is content with the story in short form, a format of storytelling that is often overlooked, we agreed. “It is an art form in itself as you say. You see artists like Pedro Almodóvar and Jonathan Glazer making shorts again. Some stories need to be told in short form and that’s the best way to tell that particular story and you just have to think ‘what is the story you’re telling? Why are you telling it?’ And for ‘Dog Run,’ it was structured so precisely to be a short film,” Nickson Brown said.

Echoing those sentiments was Daniel Deville, who wrote and directed “By Any Other Name,” a film that tells the story of a woman trying to find her sister, who is ensnared by the underbelly of London’s sex trade. While such a meaty subject matter could, indeed, make a thrilling feature or TV series, Deville wants to keep the short as just a short. “All the short films I’ve done so far, I’ve not wanted to make it a feature, I’ve not wanted to get it adapted. I just want to move on. I want to make a piece of work that stands on its own that gets me to the next film and, if I make enough of those, it’ll get to me to a feature, a pilot,” Deville said. “I love this film, I love the subject matter, I love the script. But I wouldn’t want it to be my first feature. Because your first feature to me is your signature as a director. 24 minutes is perfect. It’s nice to see really good short films. I’ve left short films going ‘that did everything I want to do.”

The film was commissioned and produced by Overton’s production company, Slick Films. Deville’s initial cut was 33 minutes long, which was a little long for Slick Films’ tastes. Back to the editing room it was, then, during which time Deville wrestled it down to 24 minutes. Cutting 10 minutes from any film, let alone a short film, is no mean feat. “It was scary to cut that. I’m a very languid filmmaker. I like those moments to let it drift and hang the camera a little bit. That’s just how I am as a filmmaker. That’s something that I’ve really learned — especially in our festival run when we’ve done so well — the one thing that is against us is time. People have said to us: “We absolutely loved it but we can fit three films in the course of your 20 minutes.” That was a big learning curve for me.”

Deville stated that he was dead set on making sure his next short was 15 pages long, although he joked that it would likely still be 20 minutes long as a final film. But Deville did have some good advice for upcoming filmmakers: choose a project you believe in. “If you don’t believe in it or you’re making it for a specific reason like to win an award, you’re not going to make a good enough film, you’re going to tick boxes but it’s not going to be authentic. When it’s authentic, people buy into that.”

We managed to catch up with Overton to chat about “In Too Deep,” which follows a grieving father who uses AI technology to relive memories of his deceased daughter and won Best British Short Film. He echoed his peers in championing the art form of the short film. “A lot of stories wouldn’t get told if it wasn’t for short films. They’re really important to start people’s careers, of course, but they are an art form. It’s very difficult to move someone, make someone laugh, make someone cry, make someone gasp all in the space of 15-20 minutes. It’s not an easy thing to do. It requires a lot of hard work,” Overton said.

You might think that a seasoned awards player — an Oscar winner! — like Overton could be used to awards by now but nights like these still fill the filmmaker with nerves. “It’s really special. What they’ve done in three years is amazing,” Overton said, praising the work of The British Short Film Awards. “I still get really nervous, it doesn’t matter the size of the event. Because at the end of the day, it’s your work, you care about it. It’s really lovely to be recognized because this is the fun bit, because it’s really hard work to make a film. More than anything, it’s really nice to be around other filmmakers. I love chatting and sharing stories, that to me is really special.”

“Jellyfish and Lobster” won the Jury Award, “Bell Tolls” won Best Screenplay, and “Muna” won Best Actress for Kosar Ali as well as the night’s top prize, Best Short Film.

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