Best British short movies

Step back into the imaginative and frankly terrifying world of Becky & Joe with Don’t Hug Me I’m Scared. In this episode: Some things change over Time.

A short film about a robot programmed for love who wants to fix the humans who do not love him back.

An animated poem about the fleeting nature of happiness.

Looks at the future of the integration of automation into economics, as well as the impact of this integration to the worldwide workforce.

What happens when an 18-year-old babysitter finds out she's sitting for a 27-year-old slacker?

Mark is going to help his uncle out. Maybe.

A sexy French maid fights the living dead.

For René Fustercluck, life was bad, the Apocalypse was awful, and then Gordon arrived.

A little girl asks to her mom what's virgin mean? mom answers. after this little girl asks what's extra virgin mean...?

When newly elected MP Richard Dove runs over a young girl on a deserted forest road, he must decide to what lengths he will go to save his blossoming career.

Morag is 86. She lives alone at the end of a track looking out to sea on her croft on the Isle of Harris, Outer Hebrides, with her three cats and twelve sheep. Morag was born in this house and has lived here her whole life, following five generations of the family who came before her. Cailleach is a portrait of Morag and her simple and peaceful life as she contemplates her next chapter, shares her unique sense of independence and the connection she has to her wild island home.

A parody/mashup of the claymation animated children's show "Pingu" (1986-2006) and the cult-classic sci-fi/horror film "The Thing" (1982).

While watering plants, a man slips on a banana peel and falls from the rooftop of a tall building. As he's falling to his death, blackbirds appear and play him a movie reel that recapitulates his life, which makes him realize something.

Bound in ancient celestial ballet, nine dead Kings arise to claim a fallen Emperor.

In these dark times, you may think that every hazard has been identified, but nobody has taken into consideration how dangerous dance can be...

An animation about a disabled penguin who lives on a rocky island in the southern seas where she feels isolated from the rest of her colony. She is inventive, resourceful and tough but frustrated about what she cannot do.

In England banger racing isn't just a sport, but a way of life. This film follows 11 year olds Finn and Harley through a cold winter race day in Birmingham.

Grandad was a romantic. He once saw a picture of Granny and realised that she was the love of his life. One day he decided to go meet her.

A short film about the changing face of London Soho and the implications of gentrification on Mimi, an aging transvestite.

A teenager wakes to discover she’s the last person on Earth.

Jessica is twenty-something year old that hates her appearance. One night, with the prospect of a night out with friends looming, her insecurities manifest themselves in a very peculiar way.

The Simpsons family are having a night in watching television when the cheeky bullies of Springfield Elementary enter their home and decide to pull a particularly mean prank on them.

A teenaged girl and her father are living their lives in a crashed spaceship, separated by a pane of glass. She begins to receive static-crackled radio messages from her mother, whom she long believed to be dead.

Inspired by Joan of Arc, Johanne follows a day in a life of the eponymous heroine. While set in medieval fantasy town, it explores the very current and urgent theme of preserving one’s humanity while struggling against inhumane environment, from modern feminist perspective.

Bill Douglas plays a writer struggling with a script about the interior lives of two women (played by Joanna David and Heather Page).

The Landlady is a short horror film in the tradition of the Amicus/Hammer films of the sixties and seventies. It stars screen legend Caroline Munro as the mysterious housekeeper who insists that tenants obey her "four simple rules."

Chucky, still trapped in the body of a Good-Guy doll, breaks into a nearby home in a desperate attempt to find a new vessel.

Codswallop is a short animated film based on a series of stream-of-consciousness illustrations by Greg McLeod which were sent on postcards to his son.

A deaf boxer must decide whether to give up the sport he loves in favour of an operation that could allow him to hear for the first time.

It is a dramatic film, with its colossal explosion and smouldering remains. Within seconds of the chimney's collapse, crowds swarm in to inspect the site; issues of the crowd's health and safety are clearly not a concern, as people smile, wave and salute the camera.

When a lone renegade grey squirrel and a hunted acorn find themselves trapped on a hostile and mysterious red squirrel island, they uncover a horrifying plot that threatens their future…can they survive Squirrel Island?

Will Mr Christie allow Terry to join the Mayan End of the World Society?

An uptight getaway driver waiting outside a bank robbery has three nerve shredding minutes to get through before his crew returns. All he has to do is focus.

In the seaside town of Canvey Island, we meet Charlie, an 8-year-old boy with a great imagination. He spends his school summer holidays in isolation, playing with his toys and too afraid to leave his room. One fateful day he becomes so hungry he must venture downstairs and into certain danger to retrieve food. It is on this mission where he comes face to face with his greatest fear; his Zombie Parents! And his true adventure begins!

An iron irons itself, a masked woman cries flowers into her bowls, while a head on a mannequin body gleams at two frozen mannequins in a jar - all of which is about to be inexplicably disrupted by a trigger of events.

Tony Stark goes toe to toe with the HULK in this action-packed short film, created by the talented Anthony Mcgrath!

On the verge of becoming a woman Sora is woken by a nightmare and decides to follow a group of men into the city in the hope of finding her mom.

In the middle of woods inhabited by wolves, an astrologist imagines what it would be like to be a werewolf, running and howling through the woods in a schizophrenic blur instead of sitting in his home watching videos. Then the moon calls to calls to him.

A humble clerk yearns for an overcoat, but his employer's refusal and his subsequent death lead him to return as a ghost, determined to claim the garment with the help of a tailor friend.

Antony Balch tackles key themes and ideas from the writing of William S. Burroughs in a unique, cinematic style.

A looping GIF has an existential crisis.

What’s the difference between love and lust? Between physical and emotional need? Can we ever know?... Does it even matter?

A prison guard gets off of work. When he discovers a bicycle on the road, he sets off to investigate the whereabouts of its owner.

A child stops a sacked thief from shooting her father.

A spiritual missionary is mistaken for a serial killer in a sleepy British seaside town.

A short film about small things - and the woman who creates them.

Life's a bitch, then you die. Then you're a zombie, and death's a bitch too.

Directed by fledgling director Peter Care with a cast of unknown actors, Johnny YesNo, originally released on Cabaret Voltaire’s video label, Double Vision, became an instant cult hit on the independent film circuit helped in no small part by its hallucinatory soundtrack by electronic pioneers Cabaret Voltaire.

When Lilly decides to spy on her brother and his secret girlfriend, she discovers that the young couple are engaged in something much darker than infidelity…

A couple arrive home and start getting it together. They both have a little secret. Based on an idea by the philosopher and cultural critic Slavoj Žižek (used with permission).

Oats and Barley follows a nervous, impressionable young boy called Jamie as he attends his first funeral. Although this isn't your average first funeral. As Jamie nervously arrives at the ceremony, it becomes clear that he is being coerced into a sinister family business.

A gang of three kids, led by a mysterious, clown-faced mastermind, stage the sweetest heist of their lives on Halloween. They’ve set their sights on the local candy store, but get more than they bargained for when faced with the not-so-sweet store owner.

A man sits with his cat on a lonely day and calls the operator, asking if there is a number for God. Premiered on the BBC Culture Show and featured in The Animation Show Vol. 4.

The ghost of a psychotic Killer Clown named "Freakish" terrorizes a young couple now living in his old home.

A short and strange tale. The idea for it came about after a rather brief and spontaneous chat about milk cartons.

Footage of a volcano eruption set to music

Tergo cleans. He cleans up after you and me. He picks up the mess we discard but yet remains invisible to all around him. Tergo's a lost soul in the London urban machine. He's ready to leave the life he leads behind.

Malcolm Fetcher is a neurotic, middle-aged teacher lost in a dull marriage with his wife of twenty years, Beverly. As he faces an all-consuming identity crisis, their marriage disintegrates and he is forced to express a deep, hidden desire...

A man lives in a forest, surviving through murder and deceit. When he finds himself drawn to two strangers, his strict code of self-preservation is put to the test.

A group of friends come to Gary's flat after a hard night's clubbing, take more drugs and chill out until the next morning.

A sinister fairytale depicting the lives of two brothers and their daily suicide attempts.

This film was made by punching circular holes into fully opaque film stock and laying discs of colour film into some of the punched holes. Only the original copy of this film exists – it cannot be printed and is therefore projected only on rare occasions. As with other Le Grice films from the late 1960s, Spot the Microdot is marked by a radical rejection of ‘illusionism’, choosing to focus instead on the material properties of the film medium itself.

Pyramid is a single screen work on Abraham Maslow's theory on the hierarchy of human needs filmed through the rhythms and choreography of middle class South England. Filmed in color and b&w on 16mm film, it continues Salmon's interest in the performance of the artist/cinematographer within both spontaneous and constructed situations and incorporates methods developed by various movements within documentary and avant-garde history. Using an array of sounds, music and conversation as well as silence, Salmon constructs an abstract documentary which both develops and challenges the themes presented in Maslow's theory as well as her own interest in human iconography, stereotype and domestic rhythm. The image of Maslow's pyramid and his pragmatic dissection of human needs and possible motivations provide a system of organization for the family and a philosophical framework for the video.

An elegant, abstracted expression of provincial life in which ordinary everyday details become frozen and magnified as its young protagonists find themselves implicated in a moment of sheer madness.

Produced for the release of the Gasbook 'Dinner Time' DVD, published in Tokyo, 2002.