Three Short Films That Refuse Comfort - London Viewing

by Rebeca Riofrio

I arrived expecting cinema. I left carrying responsibility.

What began as a simple invitation from my friend Alexei Bez—and the prospect of seeing one of my favourite actresses, Gwendoline Christie, who was presenting one of the Q&A sessions—quickly dissolved into something far more unsettling. These were not films designed to entertain or impress. They were warnings. Testimonies. They were warnings, testimonies, and acts of cinema that deepen our understanding of the world we share.

Extremist

Directed by Aleksandr Molochnikov

Extremist exposes a truth many in so-called first-world countries still believe belongs elsewhere: freedom of speech is no longer a guarantee—it is a risk.

The film follows a young Russian artist whose act of protest is quiet and deliberate. She replaces supermarket food labels with anti-war messages. There is no violence. No disruption. Only conscience. Yet this alone is enough to justify her arrest and the threat of a ten-year prison sentence.

What makes Extremist devastating is not the punishment itself, but its normalisation. Repression does not arrive screaming; it arrives organised. Calm. Efficient. Fear becomes administrative. Silence becomes survival.

This is not a uniquely Russian reality. The film feels dangerously close to home. Across Europe and USA, ideology, appearance, and belief increasingly dictate who is protected and who is expendable. Watching this film, I felt a profound sadness—not only for the character on screen, but for the actors and for the director himself. To create such work is an act of courage, but also a gamble with one’s future. One can only imagine the repercussions awaiting them beyond the screen in Russia.

★★★★☆

Pantyhose

Written & Directed by Fabian Munsterhjelm

At first glance, Pantyhose appears trivial. A couple preparing for a gala. Everything is ready—except for a pair of tights with a hole. Yet beneath the humour lies a sharp social observation: how quickly pressure exposes fractures in our most intimate relationships.

The film took me back to a moment from my childhood. After separating from my father, my mother began dating again. On one occasion, deeply in love, late for a gala, she could not find her tights. What followed was panic, accusation, tears—a household paralysed by a missing object. At six years old, I was frightened by her intensity, yet also struck by how something so mundane could tip love into cruelty.

Pantyhose reflects this universal tension with painful accuracy. It shows how modern relationships fracture not through betrayal or ideology, but through stress, performance, and the relentless demand to appear perfect. Partners become adversaries. The “better half” turns into the harshest mirror.

It is not a political film, but it is profoundly social. It exposes the quiet violence of pressure and the emotional cost of always needing to be “ready.”

★★★☆☆

The Boy with White Skin

Written & Directed by Simon Panay

This film does not ask for empathy. It demands reckoning.

Years ago, while researching a charity supporting children in Africa, I encountered facts that sounded impossible: albino children hunted, sold, mutilated—considered curses in some regions and lucky charms in others. Reality so brutal it feels fictional. It is not.

The Boy with White Skin takes us into the suffocating depths of a West African gold mine, where an albino child is entrusted to miners as protection. His voice is believed to shield them from death. He is not seen as a child first—he is function, myth, offering.

What makes this film extraordinary is its refusal to simplify. It neither condemns nor excuses. It observes. Tradition, desperation, belief, and exploitation coexist without commentary. The camera does not rescue the child—it bears witness.

This is cinema as moral document. As evidence. It forces us to confront how easily human life becomes currency when poverty, superstition, and survival intersect. The beauty of the cinematography only sharpens the horror: light cutting through darkness, innocence framed by earth and greed.

This is not a film one “likes.”It is a film one carries.

★★★★★

Taken together, these three short films form a single indictment: of systems that silence, relationships that fracture under pressure, and cultures that sacrifice the vulnerable in the name of belief or survival. No genre, no country, is immune. This is not comfortable cinema.And it should not be. Because art that does not disturb, ultimately, does not matter.

Acknowledgements

With thanks to Alexei Bez and Aidan London for the thoughtful company throughout the evening; to my longtime friend Catherine Lynn Scott, publicist and founder of London Flair PR, organisers of the event alongside David Martinez.

All three films were followed by Q&A sessions with their respective directors present.The Q&A for Extremist was led by Gwendoline Christie, in conversation with the film’s director and a cinema journalist.The Q&A sessions for The Boy with White Skin and Pantyhose were conducted by Ashanti Omkar, broadcaster and film & TV critic, in discussion with the directors.