Inspiration for the black comedy came from co-director Tom Berkeley at soccer match where two brothers were “at each other’s throats,” although where one was caring for the other who had Down syndrome. In “An Irish Goodbye,” estranged brothers Lorcan and Turlough are brought back together following their mother’s death, and Turlough must take care of his younger brother, who has Down syndrome. Lorcan will not leave their farm until they complete all 100 items on their mother’s bucket list. Co-director Ross White tapped into his observations from working in a special education school. “There can be this lack of cynicism with people with Down syndrome, a sort of openness and an honesty and purity about the way they see the world,” he says. The film depicts the brothers’ respective responses to death: “You’ve got this one character who is coping with this in a very emotionally open way, and then you’ve got his brother who is a bit more of a typical masculine response,” says White.
A young girl desperately searches for her missing sister while her father remains chillingly unbothered. Based on the renowned Danish comic of the same name by Morton Durr, “Ivalu” tackles the issue of child abuse. When a friend first brought up the comic to Oscar-winning director Anders Walter three years ago, he was reluctant to touch on the subject matter, but after getting his hands on the graphic novel, he knew he wanted to make a short film, soon involving producers Rebecca Pruzan and Kim Magnusson. The short chose to divert from the comic in two distinct ways: its slightly happier ending and its inclusion of the Greenlandic myth of the mother of the sea. Walter says, “More than 50% of the children [of abuse] think that it’s their fault. So, if this film can help them lift off the feeling of guilt and shame, that would be the best for the film to achieve.”
Stemming from the Latin word for a pupil, the short explores the desires of young girls at a strict religious boarding school at Christmas. Confined to their school, the girls sometimes carry out selfish actions. Co-director Alice Rohrwacher says the filming took place at a difficult moment given the pandemic and felt the girls’ singing letter could bring the story to life. “Through this film, I wanted to unravel these knots. And I thought that I could have the letter in the film,” she says through a translator. “And I felt that the best way to have the letter within the film was to have it sung, because if it’s sung, it could become a story which the girls could feel deep inside. And then when you sing words, you love them.”
While waiting for a tram after a party, Ebba’s night takes a turn, leading her to operate the vehicle. After witnessing men taunt a transgender woman, Ebba steps in and takes over the tram. The film was shot over five days in Trondheim, Norway, in December 2019, ready to go in 2020 when COVID hit. Eirik Tveiten, director and writer of “Nattrikken” or “Night Ride,” says the plot was inspired by his friend who, many years ago, involuntarily hijacked a tram. The story is ultimately about bystander apathy, though, says Tveiten. “We’ve had some times in our lives where we weren’t that brave or we didn’t have the courage to step in, so this is a kind reminder.”
A petrified 16-year-old Iranian girl claims her red suitcase at the Luxembourg airport, nervous about what waits on the other side of the automatic doors. The film uses a red motif, signifying the girl’s heart, as the audience watches everything get ripped away from her — including her suitcase carrying what perhaps matters most to her: her art, which, director Cyrus Neshvad points out, is prohibited in Iran. “We want to keep with us this tenderness of this Iranian girl who had to leave everything behind her — her parents, her identity, her luggage, her heart — but this is the price to give for being free.” The film ends with an eerie zoom onto a shampoo model at the Luxembourg airport: “The closer we go, we see that she’s frightened,” he says. “It all correlates together. Harm to the woman is also abroad, everywhere.”