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“Cathexis” Film Details

Director(s): Libe Barer
Writer(s): Libe Barer, Emil B. Benjamin
Runtime: 6 Minutes
Film Festival – NewFest 2026 [More Coverage Of The 2026 Film Festival]): October 17, 2026
Genre(s): Mystery
Content Rating: Not Rated

Movie Summary

Isla has been practicing for when she gets to be alone with a particular cop. She has her name down pat, her address, but everything else she has planned to go with the flow about. The question is, however, will her fantasy about how their interaction turns out become reality?

Cast and Characters

Isla (Victoria Pedretti)

Review and Commentary

Highlight(s)

Isla Is Peculiar In a Way Which Makes You Question If She Is Dangerous [86/100]

Pedretti, throughout the work we’ve seen of hers, has this wonderful ability to bring out the vulnerability of unhinged characters. This is seen through Isla since she is clearly someone with a few screws loose, but without reading the official synopsis, you wouldn’t know to what extent.

Instead, you get this woman who is clearly being questioned for a reason, but you don’t know why. She is seen hanging outside a house; her interrogation pushes the idea that she had a lover, but is she a suspect? Did she do anything, or was she simply a stalker? It’s hard to say.

But that is what makes Cathexis so good. You don’t know if Isla is simply a weird woman or a dangerous one.

On The Fence

The Public Description Reveals Something Untold In The Short [73/100]

Yet, there is one major problem with Cathexis: its summary is doing a lot of the heavy lifting, and I’d submit we’d be better off without it. The official synopsis from Newfest 2026 reads:

In a forgotten Florida panhandle town, a lonely young woman responsible for a murder becomes fixated on inhabiting the mind of the case’s detective as fantasy and reality begin to blur.

Unless I missed it, it was not confirmed that Isla is a murderer in the short. Which, honestly, makes for a better story. The mystery of what Isla did is better than the confirmation the synopsis brings, and honestly, it can feel like it simplifies the story. Mind you, Cathexis is already six minutes, so like most shorts of this length, it is mainly about premise and performance, because telling a full story is difficult in such a short time.

So working around the time limit by adding details not in the short is an understandable means of fleshing things out more, but I do wish things were left ambiguous. For while a synopsis may help explain the premise to prospective viewers, it can also risk creating an interpretation that the short itself doesn’t require.

Overall

Our Rating (79/100): Mixed (Divisive)

I should note, I saw Victoria Pedretti and skipped the synopsis because I trust her choices, and at 6 minutes, this wasn’t a huge investment of time. That’s why there is so much praise for the performance but so much frustration regarding the official synopsis. For in giving us something definitive about Isla, it takes something away from Pedretti’s performance and turns this almost enigmatic character into just another eccentric killer.