In a powerful opening to the 2026 festival year, Unruly (UK), a bold and immersive short drama directed by Cuban-born filmmaker David Ernesto Herrera, has been selected as Best Short of the Season – January 2026 at IndieX Film Fest.

In the film, order is presented as care, discipline as therapy, and reform as salvation, assumptions that gradually give way to a more ambiguous and unsettling reality.

The jury highlighted the film’s formal control, consistency of vision, and confidence in restrained storytelling. Rather than seeking to explain its subject, Unruly invites the audience to inhabit it, an approach that defined its reception throughout the January season.

Inside the Promise of Order

The film follows a rebellious teenager grappling with addiction and the unresolved grief of her sister’s death. Taken against her will to a “troubled teen” program that promises academic excellence and therapeutic reform, she is absorbed into an institution governed by rigid rules, enforced compliance, and emotional suppression.

As daily routines replace personal agency, the program’s stated purpose begins to fracture. What is presented as guidance increasingly resembles control, and the film traces this shift patiently, allowing unease to accumulate rather than relying on overt dramatic turns.

Telling the Story Through Atmosphere

Herrera approaches the material through accumulation rather than exposition. Meaning is shaped by sound, rhythm, and framing, by what is withheld as much as by what is shown. The camera rarely offers release, and the sound design reinforces a sense of constant observation.

The film does not move toward a conventional resolution, choosing instead to sustain emotional continuity. This restraint places the viewer inside the character’s psychological state, allowing interpretation to emerge through experience rather than instruction.

A Script, and a Production, Rooted in Experience

Co-written and co-produced by Antonia Horlick, Unruly emerged directly from personal experience. For Horlick, the film was born from her own healing journey, shaped not only through writing but through involvement in every stage of the project, from defining the emotional world of the story to developing its visual language and tone.

“Unruly was born from my own healing journey. I was involved in every stage of the project, from shaping the story and emotional world to developing its visual language and tone,” she states.

Horlick first connected with co-writer Oscar Garcia while working at a production company years earlier, a collaboration that later led to director David Ernesto Herrera. From the outset, the three worked closely, allowing the project to evolve intuitively rather than through rigid structure.

“From the very beginning, the three of us collaborated closely, weaving our creative visions together intuitively and organically.”

She emphasizes that the wider creative team shared a common commitment to an ego-free, supportive environment, one that allowed the material to emerge from an authentic place. Outside the filmmaking process itself, Horlick’s holistic healing work also played a key role, helping her process and release the trauma associated with being entrapped in a troubled teen program and translate it into cinematic form.

Creatively, this perspective directly informed the film’s final shape. “Unruly was never intended to be linear or didactic, but immersive and impressionistic, designed to stay with the viewer rather than explain itself.”

Performances Within the System

At the center of the film, Alexa Mansour delivers a focused, internalized performance, conveying vulnerability and resistance without excess. Mansour is known for her work in genre and dramatic television, including The Walking Dead: World Beyond and The Clearing, where her performances similarly balance emotional restraint with intensity.

Opposite her, Richard Brake embodies authority with measured intensity. A veteran character actor, Brake is widely recognized for roles in Batman Begins, Game of Thrones (as the Night King), and genre features such as Mandy, Barbarian, and 31. His presence lends the film a sense of institutional weight without tipping into caricature, reinforcing the film’s focus on systems rather than individual villains.

Shaping a Unified Vision

Produced with a substantial budget, Unruly demonstrates a high level of technical polish and production control. Rather than pushing the film toward spectacle, that scale is placed firmly in service of atmosphere, performance, and coherence.

The film was co-produced by Nick Thurlow, whose previous producing credits include Academy Award–winning and critically acclaimed projects such as Moonlight and Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri. That background is reflected in the film’s disciplined execution and its confidence in understated, performance-driven storytelling.

Why Unruly Defined the January 2026 Season

Within a January lineup marked by stylistic and thematic diversity, Unruly distinguished itself through precision rather than scale. The jury praised the film’s confidence in its cinematic language and its ability to engage difficult material without simplification or overt commentary. By sustaining mood, resisting explanation, and trusting the audience, the film demonstrates a mature approach to short-form storytelling. With this recognition, Unruly advances within the festival’s annual awards cycle.

Looking ahead, the creative team has begun early conversations about expanding Unruly into a feature-length project. While still in its exploratory stages, the intention is not to extend the story through scale alone, but to build a broader cinematic world rooted in the same thematic foundations.

“We’d want it to be rooted in similar themes, but be an expansive world that explores the duality of life and the rawness of the human experience,” explains Antonia Horlick.

Whether as a short or a future feature, Unruly stands as a work shaped by lived experience and collective authorship, one that favors immersion over explanation and leaves space for the audience to engage on their own terms.

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