by Dov Kornits
15-year-old Charli Fletcher’s short film Don’t Ignore Me awarded Best Short Film at the Inner West Film Fest.
17 April had been coined National Australian Film Day as the Inner West Film Fest closed its 2025 edition with its annual Short Film Showcase, a screening of the 12 best short films submitted this year, followed by the world premiere of James Robert Woods’ feature film debut, Moonrise Over Knights Hill. It was symbolic for Woods’ perceptive and at times confronting debut to close the festival as the Sydney filmmaker’s short film Svengali had won the Short Film Showcase two years prior, at the first ever Inner West Film Fest.
Screening ahead of the main programme of short films at the Short Film Showcase were two very quickly turned-around films created as part of a 16mm Film Challenge, run in conjunction with Sydney Film Studios. The films that were made as part of this initiative will receive a final sound mix courtesy of Inner West sound studio Sydney Sound Brewery. This embrace of the thriving filmmaker community in the area extended to the short film programme.
The Short Film Showcase consisted of films made by or about or with a connection to Sydney’s Inner West, and included Brodie Pyke’s affecting Neuromance, Yarno Rohling’s existential comedy Bucket List, Nicola Denton’s dramatic Ophelia’s Got a Gun, Charles Olsen’s tense Guardian Angel (during which an audience member fainted!), Angela Blake’s affecting Bus Stop Films drama Dinner Expectations, Fernando de Miguel Fuertes’s formalist Dolly’s Miracle Hoard, Angus Lowe’s slice of heightened horror comedy Wombo, Nikita Dunovits-Ferrier’s spiriting ode to the aging Sundown, Charli Fletcher’s freaky phone horror Don’t Ignore Me, the animated fly comedy Ladies Night by Lucy Bubalo & Shayla Nguyen, Kelly Nicholson’s subversive It Gets Dark at Night, and Nick Allen’s meta-rific Kar.
The judges, which included Sydney Film Studios’ and Breathless Films’ producer Ben Ferris, actress Jillian Nguyen, editor/director Jenny Hicks (Dale Frank – Nobody’s Sweetie) and FilmInk’s own Julian Wood, soon announced the Best Acting prizes to Nicola Denton for Ophelia’s Got a Gun and Nicholas Burton for Kar, and Best Film to Don’t Ignore Me, which has previously won Best Film at SF3, “Tuesday of Horror” in Germany and Best Film at the Inner West Youth Film Festival. Not bad for a filmmaker still in high school.
The Best Film winner received DaVinci Resolve Studio from Blackmagic Design and a one year Enterprise Subscription from Melod.ie; while the acting award winners will receive a career meeting and development opportunity courtesy of Rob Woodburn Agency (RWA).
Following the Short Film Showcase festivities, Kristoffer Lucia’s biting short Chokeberries screened ahead of James Robert Woods’ biting comedic drama about thirtysomethings away at a ritzy wine country property, which attracted a three-minute standing ovation from the appreciative audience.
The 2025 Inner West Film Fest ran from 9-17 April at Dendy Newtown Cinemas and in Alexandria where the SET! activation was housed.
