Three older sisters play hide-and-seek in the forest. As the games continue, the linearity of time collapses and the past merges with the present. Everything that follows is an odyssey of personal memories and dreams. There is a bit of the pagan and a bit of the past that grows in strength as the sisters unite.

Finnish director Saarlotta Virri has proposed that this confident film is a hallucinatory exploration of time and the collective imagination through the use of the cinematic image. The film takes its title from Virginia Woolf’s novel To the Lighthouse, which centres on the Ramsay family who spend their summers in a cottage in Scotland. Virri, who is currently studying at Aalto University, has achieved this same sense of ‘life standing still’ by using a variety of narrative strategies and by conjuring up the contours of an incredibly magical forest.

Jury statement: Candidacy for the European Short Film 2024 Award goes to a rare example of a film that confidently combines a raw but well-defined style with a heartfelt, playful story that is not only universally relatable but can expand the viewer’s understanding of their place in the world and their immediate surroundings.