The Boat

Director: David Robinson, Bryan Michael Mills

Year: 2023

A bleak, surreal silent short film that references Beckett’s ‘First Love’ monologue, isolation and ghosts. The film is loosely based on the story of Denis McCabe, a musician and employee of the Castle Caldwell Estate, Belleek and The Fiddler’s Stone - a tombstone made in his memory.

Director: Hannah Wu

Year: 2025

"A journey through the pages of my mother’s old Chinese-English dictionary, featuring tigers, socialists and roundabouts." An experimental animated short about language, meaning and moving through the world (one drawing at a time). Combining ink drawings on paper with direct animation on 35mm film, various definitions of the Chinese character for ‘walk’ take on meanings in turn literal, historical, personal and abstract.

Director: Jadwiga Ligęza

Year: 2025

ROCK SONG began as a story about a thrill-seeking rock, chasing speed and adrenaline by rolling down the hill. During the film’s development, the director experienced a traumatic event that reshaped the story and its purpose. It became a survival project, a way to understand the pain, and also transfer some of it into the world of rocks. Through the rock’s journey: falls, cracks and discovering different parts of the forest, ROCK SONG reflects the experience of hurt, carrying the damage, and slowly figuring out how to heal. The film translates the director’s changing emotional states into movement and texture, while holding onto the hope of getting better in time. Made through stop-motion animation with hand-dyed fabrics and embroidery, the film’s soft and tactile world creates a quiet sense of comfort, contrasting with the difficult emotions that shape the film. ROCK SONG also considers the inner life of a rock, imagining how it might perceive its own existence. It explores the unknowable inner reality of things and how empathy can extend beyond the human.