Scotland on Screen: Promising Scottish Shorts at EIFF 2026

Scottish film was pretty well represented at this year’s Edinburgh International Film Festival, although I didn’t find a standout feature. Thank God (and Sean Connery!), then, for the short film showcase from the NFTS Sean Connery Talent Lab. This is the second cohort to emerge from the Lab, a new professional development programme for emerging filmmakers delivered by the National Film and Television School Scotland with funding from the Sean Connery Foundation. The talent on show was heartening, and three of the six films were exceptional, which isn’t too bad a hit rate.

I’ve been eagerly awaiting the new Jagoda Tłok joint since Care, her graduate short following a Polish student over the course of a gruelling day’s work in the underfunded Scottish care system. Bubbles sees this Glasgow-based Polish writer-director again exploring themes of labour, immigration and financial precarity.

The film follows Justyna (Agnieszka Salamon), a Polish woman who’s settled in Scotland with her daughter, but their life is far from comfortable. She works as the housekeeper for Catriona (Fiona Button), a well-to-do businesswoman. Justyna is dedicated. She keeps Catriona’s palatial townhouse immaculate, cooks her and her son delicious meals and even provides the occasional shoulder rub when her boss is tired after work. Catriona calls Justyna “family” and is happy to pay cash in hand to avoid Justyna’s agency taking a cut, although from the pathetic pile of tenners she hands over, you suspect it’s mostly to get away with paying well below the living wage. Justyna’s pay packet certainly isn’t enough to make rent, even after she takes on more work cleaning Catriona’s huge second home, which appears to be a luxury Airbnb. But it turns out Catriona’s portfolio extends much further. When Justyna gets an eviction notice, guess who’s listed as her landlord?

Tłok has a sharp eye for composition, a deft ear for dialogue and a natural gift with actors; Salamon is a wonderful blend of soulful and mischievous as Justyna. Tłok mines plenty of wry satire aimed at well-heeled elites, their entitlement, their obliviousness and their rank hypocrisy. The film also delivers some glorious payback for Justyna that should satisfy everyone who’s stuck giving most of their salary to a smug landlord every month, but the comedy and catharsis don’t dampen Bubbles’ political fury. 

Another gem was Saint Anthony, Declan Dineen’s confidently shot, sharply-plotted dark comedy about a ne'er-do-well son getting something off his chest on the day of his Catholic mother’s funeral. That son is Tony (Sean Connor), who has many regrets, but one of the chief ones is stealing a 12-inch statue of St Anthony, the patron saint of lost things, from an altar in his mum’s place of worship when he was a teen. He never returned it, and he explains that it became a talismanic object for him through years where he struggled to find his way in the world. On the eve of laying his mother to rest, he tries to return the figurine, but St Anthony is missing. 

The pace of Saint Anthony is thrilling. Dineen deploys nimble editing, zippy flashbacks, a fast-talking voiceover, crash zooms, fourth-wall breaks. The blackly comic dialogue feels very much in the Scottish tradition (Peter Mullan’s Orphans is surely an influence), but the film’s nervy energy calls to mind Martin Scorsese and Edgar Wright at their most breakneck. After making you chuckle for ten minutes straight, Dineen catches you off-guard with a truly touching conclusion, which will make you want to call your mum and apologise for all those times you were a little shit in your youth. 

My favourite film of the six was the bruising PANG from Lara Delmage, who appears to be the most talented visual stylist of this cohort. It’s a troublingly surreal and sexy film examining the fierce erotic charge and power plays between Cam and Evie, two teenage best friends. Evie is glamorous, confident and popular with the boys; Cam is more reserved, slightly uncomfortable in her teen body but has a brighter future as she's soon off to university. They seem to both sense their friendship is nearing its bitter end, and decide today is the day to push the boundaries of their relationship to see if it collapses. 

Delmage's chooses the perfect arena for Cam and Evie’s psychodrama to play out: against the cream tiles, echoing soundscape and bright lights of a communal pool, where the girls' bodies are bare and at their most vulnerable. Delmage makes great use of the space, which is interrupted by two boys who become mere puppets in Cam and Evie’s battle of wills. The results are pretty beguiling, partly because Delmage isn’t shy about taking her short to dreamy territory, where teen rites of passage play out as literal rituals, and a bird's feather becomes a horrific metaphor for a queer desire that can never be realised. 

All three films are hugely promising. If there’s any justice, and if Scotland gets a better funding model, we’ll see even more ambitious work from Tłok, Dineen and Delmage at a future instalment of EIFF. 

---

Bubbles, Saint Anthony and PANG had their world premieres at Edinburgh International Film Festival 2026