Space Girls
2018 · 10m · Reino Unido
Directed by Carys Watford
Genres: comedy, coming-of-age, family
Tones: humorous, tender, whimsical
During a sleepover, four nine-year-old girls obsessed with space embark on a secret mission in their cardboard rocket — but when Dad comes home, what will happen to their mission?
Picked by Zoe
The scouts
It's a competent kids-playing-pretend story — exactly the kind of gentle, consensus-friendly short that makes programmers nod approvingly and everyone else forget by Tuesday. Nothing here resists, nothing surprises; it's doing what a thousand other shorts have already done better.
Watford demonstrates a confident grasp of the family-comedy tradition, balancing whimsy with genuine pathos in the setup, and the cardboard-rocket conceit carries clear thematic weight about imagination versus reality. A well-made entry in a familiar mode, though one wonders if the form has more to give it.
The brilliance lives in that single constraint — a cardboard rocket means every visual joke and emotional beat has to be earned through performance and framing alone, and watching the director wring so much specificity and heart from that one choice is what makes this sing past the premise.