Polo
4m · Qatar
Directed by Sophia de la Cruz
A short film by emerging filmmaker Sophia de la Cruz, produced through the Shorts by Shorties mentorship initiative for young women filmmakers based in Doha, Qatar.
Picked by Zoe
The scouts
A mentorship-program short from Qatar—the premise alone should bore me, but de la Cruz seems to be doing something genuinely weird with form or subject that nobody else would greenlight from a 15-23-year-old director, and I need to see what she's actually rejecting.
Shorts by Shorties positions itself deliberately within a lineage of women-centered filmmaking pedagogy, and if de la Cruz's *Polo* demonstrates the formal sophistication these mentorships can cultivate, it becomes a document of a specific curatorial moment in emerging regional cinema.
A four-minute debut through a structured mentorship means every frame choice, every cut, every sound decision had to count—and that constraint on a first-time director often reveals whether someone has the instinct to know which single choice makes the whole thing sing.
Festivals
- Shorts by Shorties