I spent Saturday at the Aesthetica Film Festival watching about seven hours of short films. By pure accident, my day turned into a marathon of comedy: the BBC Guest Screening in the morning, the I Have Something to Say collection before lunch, and Hold My Beer to end the day. I did take one brief detour into the thriller collection, 19th Nervous Breakdown.
As I was jotting down notes after each showing, they fell neatly into three categories.
The Bloody
Starting first with The Bloody, these were the films that leaned on gore, chaos, and violence. Sometimes to great effect and sometimes to their own detriment.
Most of them came from 19th Nervous Breakdown, which promised a “satirical exploration of everyday tensions pushed to their breaking point.”
Shitfly stood out as a success: a grotesque yet compelling story about a delivery driver living out of his car while paying off his father’s medical debt. Its gore served the story rather than overwhelming it.
Playing directly after, Are You Fucking Kidding Me? tackled a similar premise: a birthday clown doing whatever it takes to make enough money to visit his dying mother. But it used its violence less effectively. It felt gory for the sake of it, yet never quite enough to land its point.
Not all The Bloody belonged to the thriller category. No Adams Allowed, part of Hold My Beer, followed Gina and Fay, who kidnap Adam to collect unpaid sex work fees, only to find him dead in the boot.
The programme promised “the absurd and the macabre”, but the film sat uncomfortably close to boring. It was saved only by its violence. The dialogue scenes were so flat that a single moment of Gina kicking Adam in the crotch stood out as a masterpiece.
The Boring
The next group of films felt comparatively tame. Several struggled to say something new or interesting. That’s not to say any of them were bad. I genuinely enjoyed everything I watched on Saturday. But when you spend seven hours in darkened rooms watching shorts, some are bound to fade from memory faster than others.
The worst offenders for me were King of The Couch, End of Play, and Egg Timer.
Starting with King of the Couch, from the I Have Something to Say collection, described by the programme as “stories about the weight of unspoken truths.” The film follows two sons, in the aftermath of their father’s funeral, fighting for a seat on the sofa.
The problem, I think, was that it neither left much unspoken nor seemed to have much to say in the first place. What was meant to be subtext that slowly revealed itself was instead spelled out heavy-handedly. Visually, though, it looked great, and the fight sequence was beyond perfect.
Moving on to End of Play and Egg Timer, both part of the Hold My Beer collection, which promised “a celebration of characters who decide to take control of their own fate.”
End of Play had a creative concept, a fantastical agency that builds worlds for its client. For the first few minutes, I was intrigued, but by the end, neither I nor anyone else had laughed once. It was more silly than funny, and only in concept, not execution.
I loved (past tense) Egg Timer. It seemed an ironic take on the cultural obsession with thirty-something women “finding themselves”. The film follows Megan on her 30th birthday, pressured by her family and her own reproductive eggs to take the next step in life.
The closing moment, with Megan leaving her boyfriend’s bed, slipping on her Chelsea boots, and walking out of the house in pyjamas to Langhorne Slim’s Changes (“Things could be stranger, but I don’t know how—I’m going through changes now”) meant they had to be in on the joke.
After a brief Q&A with the creatives behind Hold My Beer, I realised I was wrong. Egg Timer meant every second sincerely. They genuinely believed they were saying something profound about turning thirty. Shockingly boring.
The Brilliant
That being said, I’m not just here to complain. I saw some of the best shorts I’ve ever watched at this year’s festival.
First of The Brilliant, was The One and Only Fan, about Norbert who believes he is meeting his OnlyFans girlfriend for the first time but instead meets one of her hired chatters. As part of the I Have Something to Say collection, I was delighted that it not only had something genuinely interesting to say about modern relationships and OnlyFans, but that it was also incredibly funny – my first actual laugh out loud moment of the day.
Also from I Have Something to Say, An Indirect Message took its theme literally: a man makes a short film to tell his housemates he’s losing his mind listening to them have sex every night. It earned the biggest laughs of any screening I attended.
Then came Sunday Lunch, about Grace trying to come out to her Catholic family. Its brilliance was in the sound; the music said more than the dialogue itself.
It was also tightly written, incredibly witty, and landed joke after joke with perfect timing.
From the thriller collection, Femcel was a real surprise. It follows Penny as she goes home with a man while a male-repellent virus spreads across the country. I expected it to cash in on the cultural fascination with “man-hating” and viral humour, and it does a little. The quick shots of his performative fake plants and protein powder are easy hits, but the film goes further. It’s genuinely funny, fresh, and well acted.
Finally, Don’t Puke. Before it played, puke bags were handed around the audience, which was a nice touch. The story is simple: a drunk woman trying to make it home without throwing up. The performance and production were brilliant. It was immersive, funny, and almost uncomfortably convincing.
Between The Bloody, The Boring, and The Brilliant, I had such a great experience at Aesthetica. Huge thanks to Aesthetica for providing York Vision with press tickets to the festival.