London Film Festival Review Roundup Part 1

This past month Robin had a blast attending the 2025 London Film Festival and is reporting back with several of his favourite shorts he saw at the fest. In Part 1 below he reviews Elephant Families, Cardboard, End of Play and happiness.

Elephant Families, dir. Elena Escalante

The former part of the title stems from the south London area of Elephant and Castle, a district which houses a community of people with roots from a mix of Latin American cultures who have come together to form their own social circles within the bustling capital. Coined the titular Elephant Families, these groups share a rich history together which is depicted through a mix of archival footage and animated reenactments.

The heart of the story revolves around a shopping centre which, in spite of many protests, was torn down in early 2021. From the outside the shops and restaurants who were housed in the building might look like an eclectic mix, however for the people who are part of the social fabric of the area these spaces were an essential part of their history and community.

Altogether it is a far too familiar case of a city development driven by profit over people, and the contrast of what once was and what is to come serves as a very tactile reminder of the suffering that takes place in the wake of gentrification.

The filmmaker Elena Escalante initially set out to make a fiction short, but as her research of the people and the area grew it all morphed into this very honest and down to earth documentary of these warm and inviting people fighting for their right to build a life. While specific in the coverage itself, it is something we have seen happen time and time again throughout London, and as such it serves as an important reminder to cherish and promote openness wherever we can.

Review by: Robin Hellgren

Cardboard, dir. J.P. Vine

Cardboard is a sweet and touching story of a single dad, depicted as an anthropomorphic pic, moving with his two piglets into their new trailer park home. The father is clearly missing the mother of his children, and he struggles to feel adequate in raising his children alone. The space they move into has definitely seen better days, and the neighbourhood feels dodgy at best. He finds himself drowning amidst the floor to ceiling moving boxes filled with memories of days past.

Blissfully unaware of these struggles, the two piglets quickly spring to work exploring their new surroundings in a magical fantasy land of their own creations, where cardboard boxes become spaceships and the neighbours become alien lifeforms. The dad now has a choice to either dwell in the past sorrows, or join the kids adventure and move forward.

Through contrasting animation and clever use of lighting and colors the divide between the dads’ bleak reality and the adventurous imagination of the kids’ made up world really pops throughout this film. It is a very touching story that works for adults, bringing up themes such as loss, housing insecurity and parenthood, as well as children with the help of playful animal characters and low-stakes excitement.

Review by: Robin Hellgren

End of Play, dir. Edem Wornoo

In this absurdist take on the corporate grind by Edem Wornoo we see the junior office worker “Seven” (played by Sope Dirisu) who gets abruptly promoted following the termination - in this reality a much more literal term - of his senior colleague. In this futuristic world the creation of entire universes is the product of mere hours of work, feeding an insatiable group of people collectively named “the client” with increasingly marvellous yet underwhelming renditions of worlds that fit neatly in the palm of your hand.

This is one of those cases where you have to take a leap and accept a lot of what the films throws at you early on at face value, but in doing so it rewards you by quickly establishing a rich universe (pun intended) within a familiar setting of the white-collar hamster wheel. With clever nods like the endlessly unhelpful middle manager (played by Kiran Sonia Sawar) and a clock that seemingly takes hour-long strides in the blink of an eye, the film shifts quickly between ironic comedy and high stakes thriller. In the short fifteen minute runtime Wornoo manages to pack a whole lot of engaging story and emotion and I found myself longing to see more of the world the movie constructs, with a perfectly frustrating ending as a cherry on top.

Review by: Robin Hellgren

happiness, dir. Fırat Yücel

Fırat Yücel brings us this stream of consciousness desktop diary of a sleep deprived Amsterdam resident who is consumed by the atrocities happening in Palestine and the Middle East. Leveraging a mix of digital media such as chat forums, news articles, AI prompts, search history and maps we drift in and out of topics who feel equally relevant and disjoint.

Yücel taps into something supremely poignant for the young people growing up with round the clock access to news from every corner of the globe; a drowning sense of urgency and helplessness that keeps them up at night. Intertwined throughout the stream are various means of sleep aids, from mental to medical, directly speaking to an eagerness to shut out the horrors and move on with our lives, to break the chain of so-called doomscrolling.

Just when it feels like the manic depression is about to consume us the film shifts gears, pulls back by bringing up a separate topic briefly, only to lean back in as time goes on. It is the film version of having too many tabs open at once, simultaneously unable to gather your thoughts and look away from the chaos. This is an impressive feat of discipline from Yücel, managing to touch on so many of the topics we see posted over and over again on our timelines without really delving too deeply into any of them, and with that focus instead creating a meta commentary about the impact that this stark reality have on us all, whether physically or digitally present.

Review by: Robin Hellgren