Five intimate portraits of women navigating loss, duty, and self-discovery across continents. From a daughter trapped beneath a talking smart fridge confronting grief, to Icelandic teenagers rescuing puffins while wrestling with their futures, to a young woman forced into the brutal world of cockfighting after her father’s death—these films reveal the invisible weight women carry.
Shot across the UK, Iceland, France and Russia, this programme celebrates the resilience, complexity and quiet rebellion of women refusing to be defined by circumstance alone. Tender, fierce, and deeply human, these stories honour the strength it takes simply to keep going.
DEFROST, 2024 (11 mins)
Director: Nick Flügge
Starring the cult comedians Lizzie and Sarah Daykin, vocal talents of Mike Wozniak and the score of Grammy-winning Imogen Heap, DEFROST is a tragi-comic tale of loss, redemption and bad lasagne. Maeve is a troubled young woman who is forced to confront her grief on the eve of her mother’s funeral, when she gets inadvertently trapped under her mum’s talking smart fridge.
SMILEY FACES, 2025 (15 mins)
Directors: Harvey Ryan & Chloe Crocker
Whilst delivering meals across Margate, a hopeless young cook must confront personal aspirations and a brewing resentment for her recently unemployed mum.
PUFFLING, 2023 (20 mins)
Director: Jessica Bishopp
Every summer 18-year-old Birta and 16-year-old Selma rescue pufflings (young puffins) at night on a remote island off the coast of Iceland. The pufflings leave their nests for the first time, following the light of the moon to make their journey out to sea and transition into adulthood. Unfortunately, the pufflings get lost in town, mistaking the harbour lights for the moon. Over one night Birta and Selma take it upon themselves to counteract the human impact on nature, exchanging night-time parties for puffin patrol, in a coming-of-age story of young adults and pufflings alike.
BEAKS, 2023 (23 mins)
Director: Xavier Demoulin
In the north of France where cockfights are still authorized, 18-year-old Anaïs gets into heavy debts after her father, a former fighting roosters’ breeder, passes away. As she needs to quickly find money, the young woman has no choice but to dive into the world of cockfights and make Balthazar, her father’s last rooster, fight.
DAY OFF, 2025 (19 mins)
Director: Olesya Smolkova
Vera, a mother of many children, goes with her husband and three children to a friend’s country house and tries to “relax” there.