Photo credits: Manhattanshort.com
David Bradley won Best Actor in this year’s first place short film from the United Kingdom, “Life Goes On.”
By David James Heiss
Redlands News Collective
A curmudgeonly figure is aghast that, for the last few days of his life, he seems to repeat his inane mortality, with every annoying detail that resets, and he gets to experience it all over again, in the short film “Life Goes On,” a 19-minute flick that turned out to be the Gold Medal Winner for the 2026 Manhattan Short film festival.
Locally, the films were screened over a couple of days at Harkins Theatres Mountain Grove in coordination with the Redlands Art Association, as part of the Margaret Clark Art Education Enrichment Fund’s Redlands Cinema Classic.
Guests who attended the Redlands screening held earlier in October as part of a weeklong global viewing of 10 finalists that were submitted as part of the festival, got to vote on their favorite films.
Former mathematics professor Robert Greene, of Redlands, and his wife Johanna were among attendees during the showing at Harkins Theatres.
They particularly enjoyed “Life Goes On,” a submission from the United Kingdom, in which the festival’s Best Actor winner David Bradley is a hospice patient stuck in a time loop, and with each re-lived moment, learns to take control and make the next time around a little better, or more fun.
The Greenes also liked “When The Sea Was Calm,” an 18-minute stop-motion Claymation submission from director Mamuka Tkeshelashvili of Georgia, who encapsulated discovering love and navigating war and exhile as his seaside village of Sokhumi is bombed.
“When The Sea Was Calm” won the festival’s 2026 Silver Medal.
Both films “captured the relatable human experience,” Greene said.
A still from Silver Medal Winner “When The Sea Was Calm.”
He also had fun watching the six-minute, 19-second Australian submission, “Candy Bar,” in which a little girl convinces a man standing behind her in line at a movie theater that he reminds her of her late father. He’s enamored enough to end up paying for all of her orders at the counter, and has already entered the cinema to watch her movie before the man realizes he’s been duped.
In her fifth year of attending the Manhattan Short festival, Redlands resident Debbie Prutsman, a musical theater actor, was particularly touched by Mexico’s 19-minute, 58-second film “Never Give Up,” in which best actor nominee Jose Maria Gomez endures a trip to the border wall traffickers kill everyone else in his entourage, including his mother.
“Never Give Up” was this year’s Bronze Medal Winner.
An intense moment during Mexico’s submission, Bronze Medal Winner “Never Give Up.”
“As we deal with our insane reality of ICE presence everywhere, it was so painfully beautiful to look at it from the side of a young child who is trying to get to America,” Prutsman said. “Who believes the rhetoric we’ve all been told that, if you never give up, good things will happen. Alas, the child was led astray by corrupt politicians preaching untrue platitudes. No matter where you stand on any political spectrum, watching the human condition woven into art from all over the world is such an honor, and so satisfying, and I’m eternally grateful to Annette and the Redlands Art Association for providing us such a powerful, quality event.”
Annette Weis, founder of the Redlands Cinema Classic, said that both screenings on Sept. 30 and Oct. 1 were filled to capacity.
Weis voted for “When The Sea Was Calm,” and also correctly gave a nod to actor Bradley, though she also enjoyed “Never Give Up.”
“I’m happy to say that this was very successful, with the best audience attendance and quality of films selected,” Weis said.
According to Weis, had Redlands voters had their way, Mexico’s “Never Give Up” would have won Gold, “When The Sea Was Calm” would have taken Silver, and “Life Goes On” would have garnered Bronze.
Redlands was also moved by Jose Maria Gomez, who would have beat David Bradley by just seven votes, to be their Best Actor selection.