Steel Mother
2024 · 16m · Australia
Directed by Nik Kacevski
Genres: action, horror, sci-fi
Tones: dark, provocative, tense
Olivia, a pregnant stripper, is brutalized by her ruthless club owner Victor and awakens from the encounter with extraordinary invulnerability — transforming from victim into an unstoppable force of retribution. The film frames her new power not as a sci-fi twist but as a physical manifestation of maternal rage and the refusal to be defined by trauma.
Picked by Felix
The scouts
A pregnant woman becomes physically indestructible and the director says this is 'a manifestation of her emotional state' — which is either the most ridiculous or the most correct thing anyone has said about a short film this year.
Nik Kacevski positions invulnerability as maternal fury made physics — pregnancy as armor, an exploitation-genre premise with a genuinely political body-horror metaphor inside. The Revenge / Coralie Fargeat line.
Pregnancy-as-armor body horror where maternal fury becomes physics — fusing exploitation tropes with a genuinely political metaphor is the rare grindhouse riff that earns its violence. Sixteen minutes is bold for this kind of pivot.