Creative Non-Fiction Shorts: A Playlist

Creative Non-Fiction Shorts: A Playlist

Do you have an idea for a bold, innovative and cinematic non-fiction short and are keen to apply to our Made of Truth Short Film Fund?

We like to consider short film as its own artistic form rather than merely a calling card for a feature, but it's not always easy to figure out what current trends and sensibilities are in the form, what might make your film connect with the international festival circuit, and which festivals lean towards the formal approaches and genres you're interested in (and therefore, where you'll find the industry and audiences relevant to you!).

The only way to find out is to watch many other great shorts, but we know it is hard to access them outside of festival spaces, or even to figure out what screened where.

To help, we’ve collected a selection of readily available non-fiction shorts across genre and approaches, which have played widely internationally, with dozens, sometimes 100+ festival selections, and multiple awards. We've also included a few of our very own Made of Truth funded titles.

Anyone applying to our funds should firstly familiarise themselves with our criteria and guidelines. These films are not an instruction and we encourage you to make the film you want to make, but hopefully these titles can provide you with insight and inspiration!

Playlist 1 copy

  • Will You Look At Me / Shuli Huang / China / 2022 (personal essay doc)
    As a young Chinese filmmaker returns to his hometown in search for himself, a long due conversation with his mother dives the two of them into a quest for acceptance and love.
    Watch: https://www.europeanfilmawards.eu/vimeo-movie/will-you-look-at-me/
    • Selection of festivals and awards: Cannes Semaine de la Critique (Queer Palm Award); Sundance (Non-Fiction Short Film Jury Award); Melbourne International Film Festival (Best Documentary Short); IDFA; DOK Leipzig (Golden Dove Award); DOC NYC (Special Mention)

  • Love, Dad / Diana Cam Van Nguyen / Czech Republic, Slovakia / 2021 (animated doc)
    The author rediscovers letters her dad used to write her from prison. That love seems to be gone now. She decides to write back in hope to find the connection again.
    Watch: https://www.newyorker.com/video/watch/the-new-yorker-documentary-love-dad-letters-from-an-imprisoned-father
    • Selection of festivals and awards: Locarno Film Festival; IDFA; Toronto International Film Festival (Special Mention); BFI London Film Festival (Best Short Film); Clermont-Ferrand ISFF (Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes Award)
      EFA-nominated

  • Hanging On / Alfie Barker / United Kingdom / 2021 (docu-drama)
    BFI Doc Society Funded
    Set in Oulton, Leeds, an old coal-mining community of over 60 houses still stand. Originally made as temporary council housing, but sold onto private investors, they now sit with the threat of demolition, displacing a large number of residents.
    Watch: https://vimeo.com/537369045
    • Selection of festivals and awards: Toronto IFF; Sheffield DocFest; BFI London Film Festival; Uppsala Short Film Festival; Aspen ShortsFest; Clermont-Ferrand ISFF
      Vimeo Staff Pick

  • I Signed The Petition / Mahdi Fleifel / United Kingdom, Switzerland, Germany / 2018 (personal doc)
    Immediately after a Palestinian man signs an online petition, he is thrown into a panic-inducing spiral of self-doubt. Over the course of a conversation with an understanding friend, he analyses, deconstructs and interprets the meaning of his choice to publicly support the cultural boycott of Israel.
    Watch:https://vimeo.com/284953384
    • Selection of festivals and awards: Visions du Réel (Best Short (Youth Jury), Special Mention (Main Jury)); IDFA (Best Short Doc); ZINEBI (Golden Mikeldi); Hot Docs; Camden IFF; Dokufest; True/False
      EFA Nominated
Playlist 2

  • A Move / Elahe Esmaili / Iran, United Kingdom / 2024 (personal doc)
    Elahe returns to her hometown in Mashhad, Iran, to help her parents move to a new place after 40 years. Influenced by the Woman-Life-Freedom movement, she's also hoping for a bigger move beyond just a new apartment.
    Watch: https://www.nytimes.com/video/opinion/100000009567320/a-move.html
    • Selection of festivals and awards: Visions du Réel (Special Youth Jury Award); Sheffield DocFest; IDFA; Telluride Film Festival; DOK Leipzig, BFI London Film Festival; Uppsala ISFF (Best International Film)
      BIFA and IDA-nominated

  • Haulout / Evgenia Arbugaeva and Maxim Arbugaev / Russia / 2022 (ob-doc)
    A man waits in his cabin on the desolate expanse of the Russian Arctic. He perseveres to observe a natural event that happens there every year, but ocean warming is taking its toll.
    Watch: https://www.newyorker.com/video/watch/the-new-yorker-documentary-haulout
    • Selection of festivals and awards: Berlinale Shorts; Dokufest; Sarajevo Film Festival; Hot Docs; Festival du nouveau cinéma; FIPADOC; AFI Fest (Grand Jury Prize); Palm Springs ShortFest (Special Mention)
      Oscar-nominated

  • Hardly Working / Total Refusal / Austria / 2022 (machinima doc)
    An ethnographic exploration of the work and life realities of non-player characters, the digital extras in video games. Their labour loops, activity patterns as well as bugs and malfunctions paint a vivid analogy for work under capitalism.
    Watch: https://vimeo.com/728924613
    • Selection of festivals and awards: Locarno Film Festival (Pardi di domani Best Direction Award & Junior Jury Award); Festival du nouveau cinéma; Vancouver IFF; Dokufest; Viennale
      Winner: European Short Film Award

  • My Blonde GF / Rosie Morris / United Kingdom / 2023
    BFI Doc Society Funded
    Helen discovers that deepfake images of her in sexually explicit and violent scenarios have been uploaded onto a porn site and goes on a journey to understand what has happened to her.
    Watch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pxP7lm29YuE
    • Selection of festivals and awards: Sheffield DocFest; Krakow Film Festival; London Short Film Festival; Short of the Week Official Selection
Playlist 3

  • NAYA / Sebastian Mulder / Netherlands / 2021 (experimental archive doc)
    She-wolf Naya, monitored on her journey from her birthplace in Germany through the Netherlands to Belgium, becomes more and more famous and visible – until it endangers not just he wildness, but her existence.
    Watch: https://www.newyorker.com/video/watch/the-new-yorker-documentary-naya-a-wolf-returns-after-a-century-long-hiatus
    • Selection of festivals and awards: Hot Docs; Dokufest; Sarajevo Film Festival; Internationale Kurzfilmtage Winterthur (Prix George For The Best Documentary Form); Big Sky Documentary Film Festival

  • Born in Damascus / Laura Wadha / United Kingdom / 2021 (personal doc)
    After ten years apart, a Scottish filmmaker tries to reconnect with her closest cousin. Once so similar, their paths were separated by war. As they piece together memories of Syria, they begin to wonder - ‘What happened to our family?’
    Watch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ga1vn-bBNHw
    • Selection of festivals and awards: Berlinale (Generation 14plus Competition - Crystal Bear Award); Kassel DokFest; Vienna Shorts; Encounters Film Festival, Glasgow Short Film Festival

  • The Rabbit Hunt / Patrick Bresnan, Ivete Lucas / United States / 2017 (ob-doc)
    In the Florida Everglades, rabbit hunting is considered a rite of passage for young men. Chris and his family hunt in the fields of the largest industrial sugar farms in the US. The film records a tradition by which migrant farm workers in the communities surrounding Lake Okeechobee have been hunting and preparing rabbits since the early 1900s.
    Watch: https://vimeo.com/240915171
    • Selection of festivals and awards: Berlinale Shorts; SXSW (Jury Award); Sheffield DocFest (Short Doc Award); Sundance; Vienna Short Film Festival (Short Film Award); True/False; IndieLisboa

  • Tungrus / Rishi Chandna / India / 2018 (comedy ob-doc)
    In a cramped suburban apartment in Mumbai, an eccentric patriarch and his family consider killing and eating their hell-raising pet rooster, so that they can reclaim their normal lives.
    Watch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PI_FYuxUq4c
    • Selection of festivals and awards: Visions du Réel, IDFA, Hot Docs; BFI London Film Festival; Slamdance (Grand Jury Prize); DOC NYC; Palm Springs ShortFest
Playlist 4

  • Clean / Miranda Stern / United Kingdom / 2022 (personal doc)
    A short and personal female centred documentary about addiction, and long-term recovery from it. This film weaves together observational and lyrical elements to take us into the challenging, deeply personal, and relatively unknown world of recovery – along with the processes of care that follow in the years after a period of active addiction.
    Watch: https://www.nytimes.com/video/opinion/100000009022454/clean.html
    • Selection of festivals and awards: Edinburgh IFF; Clermont-Ferrand ISFF; Flickerfest; Palm Springs ShortFest; Glasgow SFF (Best Scottish Short); Galway FF; REGARD – Saguenay ISFF
      BAFTA Scotland-nominated

  • Tower XYZ / Ayo Akingbade / United Kingdom / 2016 (experimental doc)
    Accompanied by a lilting soundtrack, characters wander through London’s concrete jungle as the narrator reflects on the current state of the city and her imagined future.
    Watch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AJtZpENGOWA
    • Selection of festivals and awards: New York Film Festival; Sheffield DocFest; Images Festival; Alternative Film/Video Festival (Sonja Savic Award)

  • America / Garrett Bradley / United States / 2019
    America reveals and reinterpets a lost history in African-American cinema. Inspired by the earliest surviving feature film with an all-black cast and through a series of vignettes rooted in New Orleans, “America” challenges the idea of Black cinema as a wave or “movement in time,” proposing instead a continuous thread of achievement.
    Watch: https://fieldofvision.org/shorts/america
    • Selection of festivals and awards: Sundance; Sheffield DocFest (Best Short Award); New Directors/New Films (MoMA & Film at Lincoln Center; Curtas Vila do Conde
      IDA Best Short Nominee

  • Territory / Eleanor Mortimer / United Kingdom / 2015
    The rock of Gibraltar is shared between two primate species: people and monkeys. The monkeys populated the upper rock long before the latest human inhabitants, the British, arrived, and now, 300 years on, there are tensions between the two. Attempts to expel the monkeys from the town with peashooters are in vain, as the animals rise to the challenges of the new game. This leads the government to resort to more drastic tactics.
    Watch: https://www.nowness.com/topic/eleanor-mortimer/territory-eleanor-mortimer
    • Selection of festivals and awards: Sundance; Hot Docs (Best Short Documentary); True/False; Full Frame; Dok Leipzig; Guanajuato IFF; Cinéma du Réel
      Vimeo Staff Pick

  • Best of Luck With the Wall / Josh Begley / United States / 2016
    An animated voyage across the US / Mexico border, stitched together from 200,000 satellite images.
    Watch: https://fieldofvision.org/shorts/best-of-luck-with-the-wall
    • Selection of festivals and awards: Viennale; Dokufest; Sheffield DocFest; Seattle IFF; MoMA Doc Fortnight; True/False