In profile: the 2026 Bafta Film Awards shorts contenders

British short film 

Magid/Zafar

Bafta nominees: Luis Hindman (director/writer), Sufiyaan Salam (writer), Aidan Robert Brooks (producer)

For Luis Hindman, a writer/director of South Asian and Northern Irish descent, Magid/Zafar was kickstarted by conversations with co-writer Sufiyaan Salam in 2022 about their shared desire to offer a fresh perspective on British Asian characters and environments. Around the same time, Hindman was directing a series of music videos for Glaswegian soul-pop artist Joesef, produced by Aidan Robert Brooks. “That project became my most creatively free and personal project to date, drawing on Wong Kar Wai, Xavier Dolan and Joachim Trier as influences — filmmakers I love,” says Hindman.

He set out to deploy those influences with Magid/Zafar, which portrays rising tensions amid the heat of a busy British Pakistani takeaway. Shot over four days in December 2023, Hindman’s film was supported by Future Takes, the high‑budget shorts fund delivered jointly by the BFI and Film4. It screened at the 2025 BFI London Film Festival, and won best British short at the British Independent Film Awards (BIFAs). “Filmmaking is a test of mental and physical stamina, but I never once felt jaded or lost faith in the DNA of the film at any point,” says Hindman, who is developing feature film projects with the BFI and Film4.

Nostalgie

Bafta nominees: Kathryn Ferguson (director), Stacey Gregg (writer), Marc Robinson, Kath Mattock (producers)

When Belfast-born filmmaker Kathryn Ferguson first met screenwriter Stacey Gregg in 2022, the pair got on like a house on fire. “They were the first person I thought of to adapt Nostalgie for the screen,” says Ferguson of the adaptation of fellow Belfaster Wendy Erskine’s short story. Aidan Gillen stars as a faded pop singer navigating an unexpected revival gig, and the film is laced with Belfast’s humour while examining contemporary Northern Ireland.

“We worked on the script as we tried to secure funding, which took a year or two,” says Ferguson. Globe (Universal Music’s film division), Hopefield (formerly IE Entertainment) and Film4 backed it, while Kath Mattock’s Stille Productions produces alongside Tara Films co-founded by Ferguson and Eleanor Emptage (an executive producer on Nostalgie).

Mattock approached the filmmaker about directing a drama off the back of her BIFA-winning Sinéad O’Connor documentary Nothing Compares. A sudden greenlight saw Nostalgie pulled together in four weeks. “It was intense but the frenetic speed energised the project, and it felt a little bit magical watching everything fall into place just in the nick of time,” says Ferguson. Nostalgie debuted at the 2025 BFI London Film Festival and has been selected for Clermont-Ferrand International Short Film Festival. Ferguson is currently developing two features — one a documentary, the other a drama — as part of Tara Films’ slate.

Terence

Bafta nominees: Edem Kelman (writer/director), Noah Reich (producer)

As soon as the sun went down, Edem Kelman was “good to shoot” Terence, which focuses on the eponymous security officer who works the night shift outside a London shopping centre. To strangers, Terence is a friendly face; to his British African community, he is someone with a special healing gift administered for a small donation. Shot for three days in and around Dalston in the capital, the film is produced by Noah Reich via his Two by Two Productions.

Kelman and Reich, both UCL graduates on different courses, teamed up when Kelman messaged Reich after learning the latter had been interning at A24 in New York.

The writer/director-producing partnership had been in development with Film4 on their debut feature — Chairman — since the duo’s pandemic-shot short Express (2022). They challenged themselves to come up with something within a month and shoot the next month, recharging their creative batteries. Cut to Terence.

“The film was built around — and ultimately named after — Terence Nzaji-Egnie, an actor by day and security guard by night, who I had taken a discreet photograph of a few years earlier, struck by his presence,” says Kelman.

Born in Paris to parents from Togo, Kelman moved to the UK as a toddler. A Screen Star of Tomorrow in 2021, the filmmaker and Reich are edging closer to shooting contemporary drama Chairman.

This Is Endometriosis

Bafta nominees: Georgie Wileman (director), Matt Houghton (director/producer), Harriette Wright (producer)

Documentary film This Is Endometriosis, jointly directed by Matt Houghton with protagonist Georgie Wileman, is an intimate, self-documented portrait of a photographer living with endometriosis. Harriette Wright produced the crowdfunded film with Houghton for Fee Fie Foe (Notes On Blindness).

“It started as a photography project,” says Wileman. “I was homebound with the disease at the time and I found it incredibly isolating, which was compounded by not seeing a true reflection of endometriosis in the media.”

The documentary has screened at Toronto’s Hot Docs Film Festival and 11 Everyman cinemas across the UK, Curzon Bertha DocHouse and the Scottish Documentary Institute. “I was probably more daunted and challenged by this project than I ever have been. I felt a huge responsibility to represent Georgie’s story authentically,” says Houghton. “I edited the film, and the biggest challenge was to track a path through the hours and hours of archive material, thousands of stills and the in-depth interview that I did with Georgie, and to craft something that reflected her experience.”

Houghton is in post-production on his debut feature documentary With A Gun And A Radio, in development on a hybrid scripted feature film, and writing a new fiction short. Wileman has “plenty of ideas” for what’s next.

Welcome Home Freckles

Bafta nominees: Huiju Park (director/writer/producer), Nathan Hendren (producer)

South Korean documentary filmmaker Huiju Park, who lives between Seoul and London, had long planned to make a film about her family, but felt she was not brave enough to try. For her National Film and Television School graduation short, the filmmaker plucked up the courage with Welcome Home Freckles, her most personal project yet.

Blending Park’s trademark move of appearing as a character within her documentaries, Welcome Home Freckles details the story of a daughter returning to South Korea for the first time in four years to end the domestic turmoil that plagued her childhood. Shot over 10 days across three weeks in her hometown of Daegu, it is produced by fellow NFTS alumnus Nathan Hendren.

“I had to fully immerse myself in the daughter’s role, which I am, but also function as a director within the scene,” notes Park. “Shifting modes constantly between director and character while filming took a lot of patience.”

Welcome Home Freckles won the 2025 Grierson Award for best student documentary, secured the special jury award at SXSW the same year, and has been seen at numerous festivals including DC/DOX, AFI Fest in the US and Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival’s PÖFF Shorts. Next up, something less personal, say Park.

British short film profiles by Stuart Kemp

British short animation 

Cardboard

Bafta nominees: JP Vine (director/writer), Michaela Manas Malina (producer)

An overwhelmed widowed father finds his inner child again in animal adventure Cardboard, Locksmith Animation’s first original short, which premiered at Annecy International Animation Film Festival in 2025. It is written and directed by JP Vine, who previously worked as a story artist at Aardman Animations and Pixar — his credits include the Shaun The Sheep TV series and Inside Out — before hooking up with Locksmith Animation for whom he jointly directed 2021 feature Ron’s Gone Wrong.

Vine’s idea for Cardboard was first sparked by a road trip to Nevada. “The trailer parks out in the desert just looked so surreal and weird,” he says. “So I started thinking about a community of people that would live there.” Also taking inspiration from his own childhood — “I just got lost in my own world, reading comics or wandering in the woods” — he found the heart of the story.

Vine sought dynamic ways to combine the worlds of the father pig and his children. “I wanted to do it in CG, because I’m interested in how we can kind of beat the computer out of it, and go into that illustrative feel. Dad’s reality is muted. And then when we get into the kids’ world, it’s loose. The watercolour is splashing everywhere.”

Solstice

Bafta nominee: Luke Angus (writer/director)

Luke Angus has been a full-time animator for 15 years at companies including Nickelodeon and Framestore, and most recently was lead animator at Glasgow-based Reve­nant, working for clients such as Oakley Sunglasses. He also sought to elevate his craft and create short films in his spare time.

The latest result of his extracurricular endeavours is Manchester Film Festival 2025 premiere Solstice, his third short after Wake-Up Call (2016) and Alienated (2021). “It was me on my own in my house making a film,” he says. “I just had what I thought was a good idea for a little story.”

A poignant meditation on love, loss and endurance, the dialogue-free short follows a lonely Inuit man who lives in the Arctic Circle, counting the days until the summer sun departs and the spirit of his lost love lights up the night sky.

The short pushed Angus to challenge himself and master new techniques. “He [the protagonist] has this big, fuzzy, furry hood, which I had to learn for this film,” he says. “The fidelity of the environment, I wanted to see how realistic I could make it look and how far I could push that side of my craft.”

Two Black Boys In Paradise

Bafta nominees: Baz Sells (director/writer), Dean Atta (writer), Ben Jackson (writer/producer)

Black queer love is at the centre of Two Black Boys In Paradise, the stop-motion animated short from Manchester’s One6th Animation Studio. Directed by Baz Sells and produced by Ben Jackson — who co-founded the studio in 2018, and previously made 2021’s Squib — the film is predominantly backed by the BFI’s Short Form Animation Fund.

An adaptation of Dean Atta’s poem of the same name, the short focuses on Eden and Dula, two black teens whose refusal to hide their love leads them to a paradise free from homophobia and racism.

“There was an interesting mix of tenderness and strength in Dean’s poem, and I’m particularly interested in human stories,” says Sells, who saw how Atta’s text could lend itself to stop-motion animation. “Within Dean’s poem, what resonated with us was a sense of celebrating imperfection and essentially ourselves. None of us is perfect. Stop-motion is not perfect, but there is a real beauty in the incredible effort that goes into it.”

After a five-year creative process from development to completion, Two Black Boys In Paradise premiered at the 2025 Anima Festival in Brussels, and was nominated for best short at the BIFAs. 

British short animation profiles by Amon Warmann

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