I had the opportunity to catch 3 of the shorts playing in the Shorts Program at Hot Docs titled Heal & Release. Here is my quick review of them.

Orgy Every Other Day

This short doc takes a look at the phenomenon of sex parties, particularly Queer ones, as a place of expression, acceptance and pleasure. The film while not directly covering the parties with their explicit nature tries to convey the experience through animation, stylistic B-Roll of the locations and sensual dancing. The B-Roll of the locations with the use of water and moisture combined with the ASMR style narration very much adds to that. The film doesn’t really cover specific people or experiences so it is hard to develop a personal connection to the idea that they are covering but it is still an effective exploration of an very taboo and undiscussed place and experience.

Como si la tierra se las hubiera tragado

This was the best short I saw and it crosses the line between documentary and fiction as the film is entirely animated to depict the journey of a young woman returning home to confront the epidemic of missing women which has been prominent since she was a young girl. The film is really well animated and has some really effective animated sequences which expresses the anxiety and severity of the epidemic of missing women in Mexico. The film effectively communicates this earlier through subtle story choices which helps ease you into this understanding of what the film is about. She sees this continuing problem as a reason her town has lost some of the life it used to have which is depicted through the use of black and white in the present and color in the past.

Nilo

This is a cinematic poem, montage of a woman using film, music and editing to express and work through the grief of going through the entire pregnancy process only to have her child be stillborn. The film is effective at communicating the sadness and complexity of this, overlapping voice calls the woman had with her mid wife to communicate the stages of the process she went through and the overwhelming experience of carrying another human being. The music is changing and constant combined with images that experiment with slow motion and try to recreate the feelings that Daniella experienced. The nature around her is what she connects with in order to move on from the loss and she incorporates that into the art which was clearly a way for her to process the grief.

These shorts are playing at HotDocs ’25. For more information, click here.