Natalia Albin’s Super8 short ‘When I Was A Child I Was Told I Had No Brain’ starring Julia Black Jackson releases with Girls in Film

31 July 2026 | By Molly Lipson

Two of the Short Stuff team have collaborated on a poetry Super8 film that is now available to watch at Girls in Film. Our news editor Natalia Albin wrote and directed the short based on her poem When I Was A Child I Was Told I Had No Brain. “The poem is about change, about growing up and feeling like you lose friends to geography or time, and how, in some ways, they take parts of you with them,” Albin says.

In the starring role is Julia Black Jackson, on casting her, Albin adds, “I'm so proud to have put Julia at the centre of it, she's unbelievably talented, and watching her process the character was such a lovely experience. I can't wait to see her do more in the world of acting.”

The project came about after producer and DOP Roberto Bosoms mentioned to Albin that he wanted to work on a narrative short. The pair both love the Straight 8 format and originally made the film for the competition. “The whole project was very much a friends-doing-something-fun-for-a-day energy. I cast my closest people, so everyone on set ended up supporting every part of it, we filmed at our friends' house, and we just let our creativity roll,” Albin says.

As well as being Short Stuff’s news editor, Albin is a writer, filmmaker and designer. She writes essays on culture, film and television, artist profiles and interviews, poetry and fiction, and is a regular contributor for Girls at Films and 1883 Magazine. She is currently doing a residency at Present Tense to work on a poetry collection and a series of poetry short films.

Speaking to Short Stuff about this particular poem she says, “We're all shaped by the people we let into our lives, and we each see our loved ones in such specific, unique ways, so when those relationships change, there's a loss of something very particular to that connection. It's hard to put words to it, but there's always a kind of heartbreak in ever-changing relationships. With that in mind, I turned it into a slightly gory, surreal poem. It felt like a way of making the feeling tangible.”

You can watch the film here.