Freddie Fox’s period‑spanning short “The Painting & The Statue” has secured a slot in the 21st HollyShorts Film Festival, running 8–17 August at the TCL Chinese Theatres in Los Angeles, an Oscar‑qualifying showcase that accepted 427 titles from a record 7,000 submissions this year.
The actor‑turned‑director co‑wrote the 14‑minute piece with Tanya Reynolds; the story remains inside a single Georgian drawing room yet sweeps across 250 years as a portrait and a marble sculpture gradually sense each other’s presence. “This tale is about isolation, connection and the passage of time,” Fox said while announcing the selection, adding that the team wanted viewers to experience history from the silent perspective of the artworks.
Mark Gatiss joins Reynolds, Asim Chaudhry, Nathan Stewart‑Jarrett, Fenella Woolgar and Will Merrick, with six performers tackling 22 characters to chart the room’s evolution from imperial parlour to wartime refuge and, finally, a present‑day gallery reckoning with colonial legacies.
Costume designer Annie Symons, cinematographer Ryan Eddleston and choreographer Arthur Pita lead a creative team that shifts periods through wardrobe, lighting and a climactic ballet interlude that briefly releases the art works from stillness.
Production is handled by Karima Sammout Kanellopoulou’s Galazia Productions alongside Slick Films and Fox’s Brandy Bay, with Academy Award winner Chris Overton serving as executive producer; the backers tout the short as a proof‑of‑concept for a feature exploring untold corners of British cultural history.
Festival organisers hail the 2025 programme as their most ambitious to date and note that HollyShorts winners advance automatically to the Academy’s short‑film longlists, a route that has produced nine Oscar nominees and three winners since 2020. The broader slate underscores that profile: new shorts from Stephen Fry, Idris Elba and Viola Davis headline a bill that blends Hollywood names with emerging directors, underscoring HollyShorts’ role as a bridge between industry and discovery in its milestone year.
