Veteran Turkish filmmaker Yesim Ustaoglu, whose drama "A Tale of Three Sisters" earned her the Golden Shell at the San Sebastian International Film Festival, is returning to the competition lineup with her latest feature, "What Remains." The film's selection marks a homecoming of sorts for a director who has become a fixture at the Spanish festival over the past decade, though this project arrives with a notably different creative team than her previous Spanish-premiered work.
According to verified production details, "What Remains" is an English-language Hollywood production running just nine minutes - a substantial departure from the feature-length social dramas that built Ustaoglu's international reputation. The short was directed by Zoe English, not Ustaoglu, a detail that reframes how the festival's competition slot should be read. Ustaoglu's involvement in the project has not been clarified in the available materials, and the announcement of her return to San Sebastian alongside a film she did not direct raises immediate questions about the nature of her role.
A Small-Scale Story With Genre Overtones
The film's official overview describes a spare and unsettling premise: a young woman is taken and bitten by a vampire, only to be forgotten. That logline places "What Remains" firmly in vampire territory, though genre classifications for the project remain unlisted in its verified metadata. At nine minutes, the short appears built around a single sustained idea rather than the expansive narrative arcs typical of Ustaoglu's features, which have often examined rural life, migration and the lives of women in Turkey.
The cast is small and, for most audiences, unfamiliar. Hannah Davis plays the Victim, Erin Underwood appears as the Figure, and Casey Schenk takes the role of the Hunter. Those three character designations - Victim, Figure, Hunter - suggest a stripped-down, almost archetypal structure in which the film's emotional weight rests on a handful of performers and minimal dialogue. The original language is English, and the production is identified as a Hollywood industry title.
"What Remains" carries a release date of May 11, 2025, meaning the short has been circulating for more than a year before landing in San Sebastian's competitive section. Its TMDb rating currently stands at 0 out of 10, a figure that typically reflects an absence of sufficient audience votes rather than a critical verdict, and should not be read as a measure of the film's quality.
San Sebastian as a Launching Pad
For Ustaoglu, San Sebastian has served as a key international stage. Her Golden Shell win for "A Tale of Three Sisters" in 2019 cemented her standing among the festival's most honored filmmakers, and a return to competition - even in an unconventional capacity - keeps her name in front of European festival audiences. Whether the festival is positioning "What Remains" as a Ustaoglu presentation or as a platform for director Zoe English will likely shape how the press and industry interpret the slot in the coming days.
The pairing of an established auteur with a nine-minute English-language vampire short is unusual on its face. Ustaoglu's filmography has been rooted in contemporary Turkish society, often with a documentary-like attention to landscape and labor. "What Remains," by contrast, works in a genre register and a compressed runtime that leave little room for the layered character studies that define her features. That contrast may be precisely the point: festivals frequently use competition slots to signal a filmmaker's range or to spotlight emerging talent working alongside recognized names.
What Audiences Can Expect
With a runtime of nine minutes and a cast of three, "What Remains" is likely to function as a tightly wound genre piece rather than a star vehicle. The vampire premise, paired with the melancholic implication of being "forgotten," suggests a film more interested in abandonment and memory than in gore or spectacle. The character labels themselves - Victim, Figure, Hunter - read as deliberately abstract, as though the short is working in mythic or allegorical terms.
No distribution details, additional cast, or production budget information has been verified beyond the core metadata. An exclusive clip released alongside the announcement is expected to offer the first sustained look at the film's visual style and tone.
For now, the most concrete takeaway is structural: a festival favorite is back in the San Sebastian competition conversation, attached to a project that is short, English-language, Hollywood-produced, and directed by someone else. That combination will be the story to watch when the festival's proceedings get underway, and it leaves open the question of exactly what Ustaoglu's contribution to "What Remains" entails - a question the festival and the film's representatives have yet to answer publicly.
Source: Hollywood Reporter
