FEMME-HELMED SHORTS (Tribeca 2025) – Reviews by Beth Accomando
Although the feature films get the bulk of the buzz and attention at Tribeca Film Festival, there is also a rich slate of short films, many of which are directed by women. Here is a wrap of short reviews for a half dozen of the best.
Topping the list of Tribeca 2025’s female-directed shorts is Catie Skipp’s Monster Slayer (Photo above). The Tribeca Film Festival description gives away the entire story, which is a shame because the film begins with a little misdirection. It’s a documentary with animation centered on Stephanie “Monty” Montgomery. The pre-title sequence hints at “monsters” to come, but our initial introduction to Monty is all bright and bubbly as she shares her love for art and drawing, and the giddy excitement of leaving her small Texas town after high school graduation for a new life in Los Angeles. Needing to make fast and good money to support her art and education, she gets a job in a strip club. And she loves it. She loves dancing and she loves the opportunity to be around beautiful naked female bodies in motion to sketch. But then a sexual assault by a strip club regular – referred to as The Monster — leaves her deeply shaken and angry. Her anger is intensified when the club manager tells her she was lucky because a lot of women want to sleep with The Monster. The police are even more dismissive and fail to even take her complaint seriously. This provokes her to seek revenge in a very personal way through her art. The film is mostly Monty talking directly to the camera and taking us on her emotional journey. Felice Wong animates Monty’s art and uses it to stunningly illustrate the story. There’s a simplicity and directness to the format that proves powerful, and Monty’s art is vibrant and engaging. Having just worked on a video podcast about strippers fighting police harassment in San Diego in the 1970s and 1980s, a lot of what Monty says resonates. What makes these women vulnerable is that the police and the public stereotype them as sex workers and prostitutes, and write them off as not worthy of attention or concern. They deserve or invite the abuse they get, it’d nothing polite society needs to concern itself with. But this kind of marginalization is dangerous, and we can see it on display now as immigrants are coming under attack from the current administration. Monster Slayer is about resilience, fighting back and using art to heal. Kudos to Monty and the almost entirely female crew who brought this story to light with such compassion and artistry.
A very different kind of animation is on display in Playing God, in which the artist is something of a cruel and indifferent god. In this film, clay sculptures come to life in an artist’s workshop but since the maker never seems happy with his creations he callously discards them. As a result, the workbench is full of horrifically disfigured creations that seem to be living in constant pain. The film is not directed by a woman but it is produced and animated by one, Arianna Gheller. The director is Matteo Burani, but he and Gheller both contribute significantly to the style and tone of the finished film. Gheller’s animation is what makes the film so striking and what makes the sculptures so easy to empathize with.
Another wondrous short film discovery is A Brighter Summer Day For The Lady Avengers, written, directed and edited by Birdy Wei-Ting Hung. If the lengthy title makes you think of an Italian giallo that’s intentional. Shot on 16mm, this visually lush and seductive film explores Ming’s sexual awakening filtered through her celluloid fantasies and colored by giallo. Dario Argento’s Deep Red is playing in the cinema where Ming sits sipping watermelon juice while fantasizing about the young boy sitting behind her. There is no dialogue in the film. It’s just a visual fever dream conveying one young girl’s emotions and sensations. It’s simply gorgeous and intoxicating.
I confess that the title alone of Apocalypse Besties was immediately appealing to me. It conjured up an absurd collision of dystopian horror and BFF comedy. And it manages to deliver on both. Best friends Sam and Becky emerge from a teary-eyed binge marathon to find themselves in a global pandemic in which they might be the only uninfected survivors. A quick assessments of the situation reveals that they have no real survival skills and it might be up to them to repopulate the world. So the only course of action they can agree on and actually execute is to remove their IUDs. Sam and Becky are the last people I would want to face the apocalypse with. It would be like being stuck in a perpetually looping chick flick and forced to binge rom coms. I would desperately be looking for Xena or Buffy, not just because my survival odds would improve exponentially but also because they would be more fun. But then that’s what makes the film’s comedy play. It’s the incongruity of the elements that’s funny. Directed by Kristen Buckels Cantrell and written by its stars Sam Reece and Becky Chicoine, the film goes for predictable gags but does so with such gleeful delight and energy that it’s hard not to laugh along with them.
A compelling short documentary that’s screening at Tribeca is Wyneke van Nieuwenhuyzen’s Ask Me Anything. Abdulaal Hussein is a Sudanese refugee living in The Netherlands, and he decides to invite native Dutch residents to ask him anything at a series of events. His goal is to open up a dialogue about being perceived as the other in his adopted country. Van Nieuwenhuyze sets up a telling contrast between the formally structured AMA events and the more casual settings such as a dance club where Hussein can just relax and be himself. Hussein changes visibly and seems so much freer and more joyous in his physicality outside of the AMA events. Hussein presents as an exceedingly smart, gracious, and well-spoken young man. His AMA gatherings elicit many of the same comments and questions. People always seem surprised at how well he speaks Dutch, and they all have questions about where he came from. They seem welcoming and friendly yet there is also something a little awkward and not fully embracing about how they treat him. But Hussein never falters in his enthusiasm or his charm. The film serves up an interesting cultural study with Hussein emerging as a perfect ambassador to bridge cultures.
And another impressive documentary is Kiss My Grass, about the challenges faced by Black women in the cannabis industry. The film interviews a number of successful Black women entrepreneurs who are demanding reforms in an industry built on exclusion. Narrated by Rosario Dawson, the film quickly lays out the landscape in which these women struggle to run their businesses. Each one lists their achievements and successes, but cite an inability to get the millions needed to actually get their businesses to the next level. Meanwhile a white dude with no track record reports that he got $50 million to start his company. Not fair and even he admits that. Kiss My Grass, co-directed by Mary Pryor and Mara Whitehead, looks to a marginalized group that is working in a marginalized industry. Some of the women interviewed had to sell or close their businesses but they all reveal a resilience and persistence that is inspiring.
