Najrin Islam

Najrin Islam is a film critic and film programmer based in London. She has bylines in ArtReview Asia, Art Monthly, Ultra Dogme, and ASAP Connect, among other publications. She is an alumna of the Talking Shorts European Workshop for New Curators #2 and the BFI Critics Mentorship Programme 2025.

Najrin Islam participated in “Greatest” Short Films of All Time 2025, a first-ever poll of its kind as a collective love letter to the art of short-form moving image. yanco and Kurzfilm Festival Hamburg, in collaboration with Talking Shorts, invited filmmakers, curators, distributors, critics, and scholars worldwide to nominate 10 audiovisual works under sixty minutes that they personally consider the “greatest” of all time. This was Najrin Islam’s submission:

Movie	Original Title	Director	Country	Year
Irani Bag	Maryam Tafakory	Iran	2021	8’
The film identifies the bag as a political tool and assesses its significance in having allowed relationships between men and women to unfold on Iranian screens. The film's essay format allows this story to pan out like a poem, and, in turn, becomes an important archive of human creativity against authority and censorship.
Your Father Was Born 100 Years Old, And So Was the Nakba	Razan al-Salah	Palestine, Canada	2018	7’
The film uses Google Earth to navigate a land that the filmmaker does not have access to otherwise. It turns this act of 'trespassing' into archival reclamation. The film marks a formative use of the 'desktop documentary'—a genre that has been picking up steam in recent years.
At Land	Maya Deren	USA	1944	15’
I thought about nominating Meshes of the Afternoon, but I think this film is an underrated achievement in surreal blocking and deserves more attention.
Statues Hardly Ever Smile	Stan Lathan	USA	1971	19’
Black joy witnessed through children as they engage in playful activities against a museum backdrop—tremendously significant to understanding how history shapes community.
La Jetée	Chris Marker	France	1962	28’
A formally significant film that never exhausts itself despite repeated watches.
Sisters & Brothers	Kent Monkman	Canada	2015	3’
The film uses montage to establish parallels between the decimation of native bisons and indigenous children—a dark chapter in the colonial history of Canada. It is an important film because it is one of four films by First Nations filmmakers that intervene in archival footage to address Indigenous identity and representation.
Un Chien Andalou	Luis Buñuel	France	1928	21’
A surreal hotpot that never tires.
Two	Satyajit Ray	India	1965	12’
The film shows the existing class divide in Bengal of the time (of its production, and arguably, the present) through a silent relationship between two children. There aren't many short films from India to behold (from the 60s), but this short has persisted in cultural memory as a significant one.
Dimensions of Dialogue Možnosti dialogu	Jan Švankmajer	Czechoslovakia	1983	12’
Communication and its utter dissolution. A formative experiment in stop-motion animation.
Wasp	Andrea Arnold	United Kingdom	2003	26’
The film will stand the test of time as an honest portrayal of single motherhood.