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Miryam Charles’s beautiful and unsettling experimental film explores the unsolved killing of her cousin

Writer-director Miryam Charles’s fragile experimental film hovers on the cusp of making coherent sense throughout – and then skittishly retreats from the brink every time, like a ghost with commitment issues. It’s maddening and mesmerising in near equal measure.

There’s a profound sense of loss at the core of Cette Maison, as it weaves a dreamscape around a little nugget of biographical pain: in 2008, in Bridgeport, Connecticut, Charles’s cousin Tessa was found hanged in her room, but the autopsy discovered that she’d been raped and murdered before the hanging. The crime was never solved. The film becomes an attempt to resurrect Tessa through drama: the remarkable Schelby Jean-Baptiste plays the dead girl who offers monologues to camera about her life in Haiti before the murder, and then acts out little scenes...

The Toronto International Film Festival, like most other festivals this year, returns with a post-pandemic mindset: a primarily in-person event with an overall line-up closer to their numbers before 2020. Their Short Cuts programme remains smaller for the time being, with only 39 selections across its six line-ups (compared to 55 in 2019), but programmer Jason Anderson has put together a diverse series across multiple forms and genres.

Here are ten shorts that constitute some of the strongest works in a generally impressive lineup.

Airhostess-737 (Thanasis Neofotistos)

In Airhostess-737, flight attendant Vanina (Lena Papaligoura) finds herself stressed on what should be a routine flight, only to find her sense of reality slip away as she confronts what’s really making her so anxious. Director Thanasis Neofotistos opens his film by stating it was “conceived in a dream,” and part of the movie’s fun is how he piles on the surrealism as we get to know more about Vanina.

It is the debut feature of Canadian-Haitian director Charles.

UK grassroots collective T A P E is moving into theatrical distribution, with the release of its first title, Miryam Charles’ debut Cette Maison.

T A P E was founded in 2015 by Isra Al Kassi and Angela Moneke, and curates screening events which respond to the lack of representation on screen. Al Kassi is also head of programmes and audience development at Birds’ Eye View, a UK organisation that campaigns to support women and non-binary people in all aspects of film.

The film was acquired from Berlin-based sales agent Oyster Films.

It is the debut feature of Canadian-Haitian director Charles.

UK grassroots collective T A P E is moving into theatrical distribution, with the release of its first title, Miryam Charles’ debut This House (Cette Maison).

T A P E was founded in 2015 by Isra Al Kassi and Angela Moneke, and curates screening events which respond to the lack of representation on screen. Al Kassi is also head of programmes and audience development at Birds’ Eye View, a UK organisation that campaigns to support women and non-binary people in all aspects of film.

The film was acquired from Berlin-based sales agent Oyster Films.