Shorts: ‘something still’ and That Elusive Pursuit of Light

A hello and a goodbye live perilously close to one another in the opening moments of Ariel Mahler’s sexy, affecting drama, something still, which just played at Toronto’s Inside Out Film Festival. We often long for love stories that feel complete, because they comfort us. I’d argue that the romances that end teach us more about who we are and what we want and how we should not communicate more than a happily ever after. Mahler’s film throbs with longing for things left unsaid and for things we could take back.

John Brodsky’s Tom arrives at his apartment door with unfolded moving boxes. He doesn’t cross the threshold before his mind goes back to the first time he arrived. In that flashback, Zane Phillips’ Max welcomes him in before they have the kind of passionate sex where you can feel something in the air shifting. As Max yanks Tom’s pants off, Tom caresses the bottom of Max’s chin before we return to the present. No one welcomes Tom through the apartment as he is getting ready to leave it for the last time. In this moment, he feels that loneliness

As Tom prepares to pack his things, he passes through memories of his relationship with Max. They have parties where Tom plays with a grey wig with some heels and a bra–their apartment feels like the kind of space where Tom feels entirely like his own person. He doesn’t have to hide. When they decide to invite a boy over to play for a threesome for the first time, you can sense that Max is a little hesitant, but he embraces it and says they can get on Grindr together. When Max catches Tom on the app when he is sleeping (that notorious bubbly blerp sound), though, you can see that it’s starting to get to him.

Maybe the sex is merely a release for Tom while Max needs a connection. When they invite Panagiotis Margetis’ Dan to play, even the positioning unlocks something. Dan stares into Max’s eyes as they play before Tom sees them alone in the shower together, a tinge of worry  crossing Tom’s face. Did Tom open the floodgates for pleasure for himself without considering how they should approach playing with others as a couple?

Brodsky (who also wrote the screenplay) and Phillips have an absorbing chemistry. When things are happy, they almost sink into one another, as if their bodies yearn for the other’s touch. Brodsky knows how to give melancholy bursting layers (hunt for the Nicholas Finegan’s short Some Kind of Paradise) as we see Tom fighting for what he wants when what he might need is right in front of him. Phillips is doing some of his best work in short films as of late. Ben Lewis’ She Raise Me, Michael Schwartz’s Strangers on a Beach and his work here proves that he knows how to connect his presence with the words on the page.

Working with cinematographer Shi Hyoung Jeon, Mahler employs a warmth with yellow light throughout something still. When Tom reaches back into his memory for the first time, the apartment feels entirely flooded with sunlight before snapping back to cool reality with blues, navy, and greys. There is a heartbreaking moment at a party when Tom is feeling himself in drag and dancing with friends when he spies Tom and Dan getting hungrily stoned on the balcony. That same amber hue hangs over their heads like halos as we then mistake Tom as being outside like he’s being left out in the cold. Mahler is not afraid to mix those feelings of desire with that sadness or regret. It’s honest.

We cannot turn back the hands of time no matter how deeply we feel the wounds of the past. Mahler’s film offers closure to some with a hope that we can carry those passions onto the next encounter and the next love. Perhaps that light will find us again when we least expect it.

something still will next play NewFilmmakers Los Angeles on June 20, 2026.