Sweet and Short: Bricked (Dir. Will Stepney)

Here at OBSCURAE, we've always championed short storytelling as the hunting ground for your next favourite filmmaker – and encouraged you not to skip the shorts programme! Now, we take that one step further, partnering with London Film Club to bring you cutting edge short films from prolific, talented and motivated filmmakers, and platforming the names you'll be seeing in the credits for years to come. This is "Sweet and Short"!

This short beautifully unsettled every organ in my chest. 

Directed with restraint and urgency, Bricked is visually engaging and emotionally unnerving. The short is tightly focused, depicting an unravelling father whose connection to his children is weakened by his outdated choice of technology- an old block Nokia. As technology fails him, he cannot collect his children as needed. 

Aldington's performance sticks with me. We pass between wide, mid shots and close-ups, engaging with every inch of the main character's performance. He doesn't cry. He doesn't rage. Instead, he simmers. His frustration plays out in quiet but frantic behaviours. His eyes are focused and desperate, his tense body created a tension in my own. 

The short's length lends credit to itself as we are not given a bigger depiction of the father's character. He is not the stock 'bad dad' or a wholly sympathetic figure. He is real. The film portrays his urgency but withholds judgement, allowing his stress to be depicted in close, almost claustrophobic shots and then relief in wide shots as we realise we, like the character's withholding help from him, are distanced from his struggle. 

The use of the old phone serves as a metaphor for his disconnect from his current situation, a failure to adapt. It is a self-built wall from his responsibilities, yet we as an audience still feel sympathy when it limits him. This idea is mirrored in him accidentally locking himself out of his house. It lacks a sense of responsibility, yet his desperation draws us back in. He is pushed to a new location. We want to follow his story.

The choice of location is purposeful and clever. The father's flat is impersonal, the vape/phone repair shop's cramped framed shots amplifies his discomfort and the ticking-clock tension. The blue light of the shop gives a desperate feel, like a bright surgery light highlighting his face. It's harsh and tense. 

The film's refusal to resolve the story offers no catharsis, which is exactly the point. The emotional question of a father's responsibility fulfilment is left unanswered, making the audience sit with the same unease and uncertainty the father feels. It's a quiet, devastating choice. A snapshot of time in a clearly chaotic life. By framing a small domestic crisis through the lens of technological failure, it explores larger themes of fatherhood, disconnection, and time running out, both literally and metaphorically.