Dora Leu is a Romanian film critic and filmmaker currently based in Dublin. She works as a programmer for the Bucharest International Experimental Film Festival (BIEFF) and for the feminist film initiative F-SIDES. She is currently researching videonostalgia and the role played by cassette-based media in describing contemporary identities on screen at Trinity College Dublin. Dora often writes about East Asian cinema, with a focus on Japan and Hong Kong. She keeps a picture of Leslie Cheung in her wallet.
Dora Leu
Dora Leu 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 Dora Leu’s submission:
This is less a testament to any canonical “greatest” of all cinema, and more a testament to myself at this moment in time—if asked next week, and the week after, I would give two very different answers. To pick a list of only 10 always ends up being somewhat restrictive, so for my list below, I’d precede the name of the directors (plus one band!) over the films themselves. Nothing is ranked.
— Dora Leu| Movie | Original Title | Director | Country | Year | Duration | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Katatsumori | Naomi Kawase | Japan | 1994 | 40’ | ||
| Laura Rôra | Shûji Terayama | Japan | 1974 | 9’ | ||
“Hey, you, in the audience!” “We know the types who think avant-garde is just a naked lady.” The screen fights back in one of Terayama's funniest intellectual shorts. |
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| Mobile Men | Apichatpong Weerasethakul | Thailand | 2008 | 4’ | ||
Cinema stripped bare—or the world’s shortest lesson on the beauty of cinema. |
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| La Jetée | Chris Marker | France | 1962 | 28’ | ||
This is not Marker’s greatest film, but certainly his most romantic one. |
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| Nicht löschbares Feuer The Inextinguishable Fire | Harun Farocki | Germany | 1969 | 22’ | ||
Much like with Marker, this may not be the greatest (these two filmmakers could populate a top 10 greatest films of all time just themselves). This is simply the best Farocki I can recommend for someone to start with. |
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| For My Crushed Right Eye つぶれかかった右眼のために | Toshio Matsumoto | Japan | 1968 | 15’ | ||
This may not be Matsumoto’s greatest film, but it has my favourite title. |
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| Girl Power | Sadie Benning | USA | 1992 | 15’ | ||
| Shuffle | Gakuryū Ishii | Japan | 1981 | 34’ | ||
An ode to motion. |
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| Sparks - My Baby’s Taking Me Home | Shaw Petronio | 2003 | 4’ | |||
I’m a strong advocate for music videos as short film formats, and there’s no one else who does it like Sparks. |
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| Vignette for Tinker Tailer Soldier Sailor Rich Man Poor Man Beggar Man Thief | Richard Ayoade | United Kingdom | 2021 | 1’ | ||
There are some condemnable stances and politics from some of the parties involved, but I’m impressed by how much 30 seconds of filmed material can hold so much storytelling information and how easily they build a mood and atmosphere. |
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