Press / Reviews
"Simone Smith achieves the filmic equivalent of a 17-minute anxiety attack in this rapturously shot short film. " - LOUD AND CLEAR on THE MöBIUS TRIP
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Interview with CRACK Magazine
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"dominated by darkness and cloth." - Take 'Em To The Movies, Austin! on THE MöBIUS TRIP
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"this is one that shouldn't be missed for fans of experimental and avant garde horror." - The Horror Revolution on THE MöBIUS TRIP
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"Simone Smith's THE MöBIUS TRIP is the gnarliest Scottish film of the year - although that title could easily be applied to previous films from Smith like SLAP (2018) and RED (2012)..." - JAMIE DUNN from THE SKINNY
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"Beautifully captured, as the filmmaker allows for the insanity to loom over you before fully encompassing your nerves. It’s a film that isn’t meant to have a single meaning, it's allowed to be open for interpretation with its odd nature and that allows each and every audience member to come out of it with something remarkable." - CINEFIED on THE MöBIUS TRIP
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"The Best of Encounters 2023" - SHORT OF THE WEEK
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"10 short films about rave culture and free party movement to show at ICA." - DJ MAG
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"I absolutely love The Möbius Trip, every aspect of it. Even in the moments when I began feeling motion sick, I fell further and further in love with the film. From the claustrophobic nature of the car, to the juxtaposition of dark and light, to the truly spectacular acting, this entire journey was brilliant and enthralling." - BAIN'S FILM REVIEWS
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"From the high rises of Dennistoun in the East End to attending the Oscar-qualifying Hollyshorts Film Festival, Simone Smith has joined the likes of Bill Forsyth (Gregory's Two Girls) and Lynne Ramsay (We Need to Talk About Kevin) in putting Scottish cinema on the world map. Over the last few years, the young mum has filled her boots with accolades like the BAFTA New Talent Award and jury special mention award at the Glasgow Short Film Festival as her dark and thrilling short films like Red (2012), Slap (2018) and the The Möbius Trip (2023) have impressively gripped global audiences."- GLASGOW TIMES
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"Take a ribbon, twist one of its ends and join one end to the other. You have just built a Möbius strip, an object with no beginning and no end, what we know as the infinity symbol. This is a great depiction of a family's endless hellish road trip to a wedding in Scotland. No wonder it's right there in the title of the short film, The Möbius Trip, directed by Simone Smith. Trapped in a restricted space, with limited movements, with no possibility of escape and on a road that is always the same and endless, four people are desperate to get somewhere. Anxiety and nervousness are more than noticeable, they take up more space than Maren, Jacob, Ivy and Clit and suffocate. All the details, no matter how small, bother. They are small worries about things that only the person can see, irritation with the other's quirks and those postures where excitement is the result of tiredness. The claustrophobic camera of The Möbius Trip oppressively travels through these people and Smith traces how each of them reacts to the situation, whether it be recklessly getting drunk to escape; feigning a non-existent calm; deluding himself with the situation he will find in the future, or trying to pretend that he is not there and smoking incessantly. There are many elements that are placed there to provoke even more conflicts between them: the tape with words of self-help, the music, the blanket and a tension that does not stop increasing, as well as the hole in the sock and the madness of the red nail polish around it. of the tear that does not stop its progress.
The fight that has been expected from the beginning finally arrives, with a lot of screaming and confusion, taking over the camera and bringing chaos into that microspace. This goes on until another element arrives to change things, slipping into something that maintains the disorder (or, better say, extrapolates it), but leads to a temporary possibility of liberation together, a journey within the journey, now with other aesthetic possibilities. But the journey is of Möbius, and like anything that is infinite, we know where it will lead. It's still harrowing, but it's also a lot of fun. And Smith is skilled at building that tension and manipulating the feelings. Thus, The Möbius Trip is, without a doubt, a beautiful and efficient experience." - CENAS DE CINEMA
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"Like Valhalla Rising, but with a car full of a dysfunctional family rather than a boat full of Christian vikings. Magnificent." - LETTERBOXD on THE MöBIUS TRIP
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"When I caught The Möbius Trip at Glasgow Short Film Festival in March, I was instantly struck by the way it took anxieties surrounding a relatable scenario – a family going on a long car journey – and pushed them into a truly nightmarish scenario. Audiences seemed to agree, with Simone Smith’s film winning a Jury Special Mention award. Using claustrophobic framing, overlapping often foul dialogue and experimenting with hallucinogenic imagery, it expertly depicts a bickering Scottish family trying in vain to find a wedding in the middle of nowhere; striking a chord with anyone who has spent more time than they would wish to with their immediate family. Smith joins us below for a conversation in which we dig into how being with family can bring out your inner madness, shooting almost entirely within the confines of the car, and finding the film’s more visually outré tone in the process of post-production. " - DIRECTOR NOTES full interview on THE MöBIUS TRIP
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“Very good indeed and very original.” - JAN HARLEN (Stanley Kubrick's producer) on RED
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"The jury gives a special mention to a film that really had a strong impact on us in its radicalism. We were very impressed by the strong and adventurous cinematic vision of the director, and their visceral film that felt like a unique and peculiar viewing experience. We are trapped with characters in a never-ending loop and final descent into madness, finding its climax in what feels like the liberation of the female gaze. We are excited by the potential of the filmmaker’s artistry, and are looking forward to her contribution to the future of female filmmaking.” - Jurors at Glasgow Short Film Festival on THE MöBIUS TRIP
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"The small details might include the tape on the tape-deck and the tape within the tape-deck but the big loud details include a quantity of effing and geoffing that sits somewhere between Tarantino and Scotland." - Eyes for Film full review on THE MöBIUS TRIP
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"The Möbius Trip is caught in a similar recurring pattern as To Do, expanding one man’s myopic search for clarity into a family’s never-ending car journey towards a wedding. Using a claustrophobic 4:3 ratio, ominous drone shots and foul-mouthed, overlapping dialogue, the journey refracts and collapses upon itself to suitably hallucinogenic effects. Both otherworldly yet uncannily familiar to anyone who has been stuck on an endless car journey with their family to the absolute nether regions of the UK." - Director's Notes on THE MöBIUS TRIP
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"Slap is a hallucinogenic nightmare vision about a girl’s moral dilemma in her attempts to fit into her primary school class. Featuring harsh musical accompaniment and abrasive editing, the film overwhelms the senses and settles deeply under the skin. With the kaleidoscopic imagery of teddy bears and Hubba Bubba packets, Slap is a disturbing but strangely transfixing watch. I’ve never seen anything quite like it." - IFF Perspectives on SLAP
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"Mum’s Cards is a fine film, and it would be churlish to suggest the judges chose the wrong winner, but to my mind there were more exciting works on display from the less established filmmakers in the competition. Particularly bracing was Simone Smith’s Slap, an overwhelming, multi-sensory short about the intense terror of the school playground. Throwing out conventional film grammar to hit on a more primal level, Smith’s impressionistic knockout follows an introverted girl who longs to join her primary school’s toughest gang, the Hubba Bubbas, a crew of bubble-gum-chewing mean girls decked in pink denim and lipstick. The abrasive synth score and jagged editing contrast with moments of surreal poetry, including a nightmarish tableau in which the bear pit of school becomes a literal (teddy) bear pit." - BFI Sight & Sound International Film Magazine on SLAP
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“The Jury were struck by the work of this director who is pursuing her own sensory style in design and narration. We want to encourage her in developing her individual take on the world and look forward to her next projects. The Special Mention goes to Simone Smith for SLAP.” - Glasgow Short Film Festival Jury on SLAP
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"Pop culture and playground politics collide in this kaleidoscopic and disturbing drama about a girl trying to fit in. But the film's true success lays in its dazzling, idiosyncratic and kinetic form and style, which unleashes a rarely experienced kind of cinematic energy. It is a film which, genuinely, could be described as original and unforgettable. That Blueprint's audience voted it one of the year's top four is further testimony to the film's impact. It deserves every award, nomination and kind word it receives." - Hans Lucas - Curator, Blueprint: Scottish Independent Shorts on SLAP
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"I love you and think you connect deeply with actors where we can be open and brave. I would work with you again in a heartbeat." - Daniela Nardini (BAFTA awarding winning actress / This Life) on THE RINSING and XX.
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"So often we allow ourselves to experience the ethical dilemma of spectatorship as mere anxiety—an academic curiosity, a problem for the anthropologists—that a film with the animal urgency of Simone Smith’s “Red” can still leave us windless. Clarified by the bold-faced moral stakes of war photography, this latent anxiety achieves pitched form, rendered in a throbbing cinema of incoherence, scrolling through interchangeable avatars of victim and oppressor, culminating in the mechanical violence of the decisive moment.
The piece is anti-analytical, an attempt to circumvent any glamorizing distance of analysis, to dismantle the reassuring borders of the frame. (Isn’t there an indictment contained in the material tension between the fluidity of digital and the boundaried instant of analog picture-making?) Smith’s editing produces a frame so thoroughly embodied that we stop blinking for ourselves.
The shutter collapses. A meaty red floats on the screen. The shutter opens. We gasp for air, struggle to make sense in sense’s absence, among perspectives too frantic to cotton, against hard landscapes pilfered of meaning. The shutter collapses. The stability of red is almost soothing. The shutter opens. The mechanism carves an alibi out of the light, frames our complicity as something else, a stillness. The shutter collapses." - NO BUDGE FILMS on RED
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"Here's a true work of art. From Simone Smith, we have a rather poignant film that is sure to stick with you." - AIN'T IT COOL NEWS on RED
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“Kicking off our new section to showcase short film of the most talented new filmmakers, is the BAFTA award winning Simone Smith with the terrific experimental short film entitled RED. Shot with a canon 60D, Red is open to anyone’s interpretation and offered you the chance to form your thoughts whilst you wonder what could happen next. The haunting mix of sound effects lingers in the distance as we go on a journey too realisation and unfortunate truth of the way society is and the sick world we all live but pretend everything is alright. RED makes it point very well for being so short and captures the attention almost immediately and doesn’t let it go. Stay tuned to Mike & Rusty’s for more from this talented young director.” - Mike and Rusty’s on RED.
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“Came to see your production last night… Was a very powerful and thought provoking piece!" - Jean (audience member on RED LIVE THEATRE performance at the CCA, Glasgow)
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“Just watched the most amazing piece of film and physical theatre… most creative use of space I’ve ever witnessed and one of the most powerful short films I’ve ever seen… Bravo!" - Claire (audience member on RED LIVE THEATRE performance at the CCA, Glasgow)
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“Here's a jarring/lovely smack in the face (and ears). Here's the latest (experimental) short from Saturday Shorts veteran Simone Smith. "Alone? Unattractive? Unloved? Sign up for THE RINSING today. A program that will bring you face-to-face with the new, improved you.” - Ain’t it Cool News on THE RINSING
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“THE RINSING is another short film by talented young British filmmaker Simone Smith and starring This Life’s Daniela Nardini. Her previous film RED featured on Mike and Rusty’s a few months ago where I praised her ambition and obvious ability setting the mood. And although this short is 3 mins long, it is packed with atmosphere and some honest commentary on life that may not have been shown this was before. I’m a big fan of this up and coming director and want to see more but it is also apparent so do others! THE RINSING won Best Film on Shorts on Tap ‘Woman at Crossroads’, as well as featured on Channel 4’s Random Acts in December. We will be seeing more from her that’s for sure.
THE RINSING gives an inside look into society and the blurred reality within. Inventive use of voice over mixing as well as cutting but it is the multi meaning that is fascinating. Everyone who watches the film will see it differently based on their own journey in life but that’s the beauty of art. The original intention might be one thing, but the story can be taken in unlimited ways. I saw the depravity and narrow minded of the male species and the real women’s struggle to be noticed as well as the urge to control it. Life is filled with unrealistic goals for women but for the conditioning of men as well as women is in no way our fault. Women at least are conscious of this and have to live life the best way then can whilst having to pretend that men are more dominant when that just isn’t true.
The overall feel is very polished and rugged at the same time. The story is in the cutting which is also done by Simone as well as writing and directing duties. There’s so many ways to make a film and the slightest change to a shot could change the whole story but I got it loud and clear what was meant to be said.
Another great film by Simone and stay tuned to Mike & Rusty’s for more!” - Mike & Rusty on THE RINSING