Over, a 12 or so minute short by UK filmmaker Jörn Threlfall, unspools time backwards until it reaches one particular event. We are in a London street in an affluent suburb; the camera is, for most of the film, held far away – flicking through a sequence of long shots in the corners of which minute, curious details flourish. It’s a short riddle with a pointy answer and we are given only a mottled, frugal stream of clues. I’ve not peered so hard at a movie screen since the last shot of Caché (2005). At least here we are given a resolution. When what happens does happen, everything clicks into place. But everything that precedes it is cryptic. The first shot at 11:45pm is dark, almost impenetrable until the eyes adjust: the camera turns into our street; a dog barks in the distance; the light of the streetlamps graze the window of a car; a porch light offers a small dim refuge. Something’s happened: something that causes a man to walk and stop and tilt, something that causes a dog to heel, something that causes an alarm to flare, something that causes men to peer into the sky, something that makes conversation, something that causes flowers to be laid, to be laid far away, something that goes unnoticed, something for someone to jog past, something that allows the plastic wrapping of the flowers to flap in the wind, something that lets people do their jobs – people in yellow fluorescent vests and dark overalls, something that puts the markers where they are, something that twists tape around telephone poles, something that causes a shudder, something that makes blood, something that changes the concrete, something for a siren, something for a call, something that turns a torch, a photograph, a coin, a pair of gloves, a mobile phone, into something else.

Over premiered as part of the We Are One: A Global Film Festival on 30 May 2020, and will be available to stream for free until 6 June 2020.

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Valerie Ng is a sort of writer based in mostly Melbourne, studying something completely unrelated to film. She’s also a managing editor for Rough Cut and her words appear very sporadically on other sites and on @valerieing.