A Short List of Short Movies
Snacky flicks! Less than 90 minutes!

Lockdown life has ruined my brain. Reading is still hard for me, and I can’t even watch TV shows or movies without fucking around on my phone simultaneously. So I’ve really come to enjoy short movies — films that are a tight 90 minutes or less. Perhaps you will too? Here’s a short list of short movies I’ve enjoyed that actually held my dumb, fleeting attention span.


Grass dir. Hong Sang-soo 
Runtime: 1 hr 6 min
Where to stream: Vimeo

I love Hong Sang-soo movies for their simplicity and talkiness. This one is about a young woman who sits and overhears intense conversations in a cafe as she writes those dramatic conversations into her own work-in-progress screenplay. 


Claire’s Camera dir. Hong Sang-soo 
Runtime: 1 hr 9 min
Where to stream: YouTube

Set in France during the Cannes Film Festival, I love the way the Koreans and Isabelle Huppert’s character use English as their second language to communicate with each other.


Lovers Rock dir. Steve McQueen
Runtime: 1 hr 8 min
Where to stream: Amazon Prime

This movie has one of the most sensual scenes I’ve ever seen, where a bunch of stylish young people are on the hazy dance floor of a 1980s London house party slowly gyrating and vibrating on each other while the song “Silly Games” by Janet Kay plays almost in its entirety.


Snowy Bing Bongs Across The North Star Combat Zone dir. Rachel Wolther & Alex Huston Fischer
Runtime: 40 min
Where to stream: 👇🏽

I am a forever huge fan of Cocoon Central Dance Team and this movie is so fucked-up special and beautiful. You can watch the film in its entirety on YouTube.


Shiva Baby dir. Emma Seligman
Runtime: 1 hr 17 min
Where to stream: HBO Max

There’s plenty of awkwardness and second-hand embarrassment to experience in this movie, but at least it’s over in a little over an hour. 


We Are dir. Eugene Kotlyarenko
Runtime: 1 hr 12 min
Where to stream: 👇🏽

I really love Eugene Kotlyarenko’s level of care and detail with everything he writes and directs, given that he usually works within limited resources. This one’s free to stream on Vimeo.


Bernice Bobs Her Hair dir. Joan Micklin Silver
Runtime: 48 mins
Where to stream: 👇🏽

This was a 1976 episode from the anthology series The American Short Story and it’s available on YouTube. Based on the F. Scott Fitzgerald story of the same name, set at the beginning of the flapper jazz era, a hilarious young Shelley Duvall keeps daring that she’ll bob her long hair.