Toronto After Dark 2026 Short Film Short Review: MOIRA, An Ambiguous European Arthouse Gem

A patient shot of a damp London metro platform opens Anastasia Mischenko's superlative short film Moira. It's a shot that instantly evokes the static-adroit Euro-cinema of early 2000s Bruno Dumont, and the more recent work of Milagros Mumenthaler (The Currents).

A woman leaves the platform and returns home to discover her partner in the middle of vocal sex. She stands in the threshold of the doorway, not entirely in the house, while the camera holds on her face as she processes the sounds coming from the bedroom upstairs. She leaves and makes her way across London on transit, through bleak, partially-desaturated autumn fields, bricked alleyways, and at one point through the Greenwich foot-tunnel (under the Thames) in all its curved walls and fluorescent lit glory.

 

The woman is played by Russian actress Aleksandra Florinskaya, who remains nearly silent for the 12-minute run time, yet speaks in entire essays with her body language and glances. Her rage, disappointment, or perhaps resigned permission from her domestic discovery seem to give off a scent, pheromones, to the men she passes in public spaces. This is coupled with her placement in several claustrophobic and agoraphobic scenes, where the film language is doing a particular dance with her performance here.

 

This is further underscored following the films ambiguously disturbing (or empowering) climax, where we again witness all the locations, absent of people, and ominously liminal. The short was lensed by Mikhail Krichman, Andrey Zvyagintsev’s regular cinematographer, including this year's Cannes winner, Minotaur, and the cinematography is truly exceptional here.

 

If there was ever a short film that you immediately wish would become a feature, it is Moira. I suspect Mischenko has plenty more to say about choices and actions, and how we as witness and judge often silently convict people, all too easily.