Short films can achieve many things in their compact running time, but the teasing out of a character-driven mystery is surely one of their most intriguing aims. Oliver S. Milburn’s tight little real estate drama Dunroamin is seemingly about nothing more than a young man touring a nice country house that is up for sale,…
The cinema of Kosovo, or indeed Eastern Europe in general, does not receive much attention from Western viewers. This is due to the difficulties of production, distribution and exhibition, all of which are daunting for a filmmaker in any part of the world. It is therefore heartening when a film from this under-represented area does…
The nervous hell of a new job interview is satirized, then sentimentalized, then psychologized in writer/director Anthony Garland’s tonally scattered short Ophelia. The titular character (played with fair restraint by Ali Mueller, “Category 5”) arrives on time in fancy business attire and has only a moment to size up her competition before being called in…
Movies often attempt to capture the breadth of a whole life fully lived, but few do so with little more than a single breath. That’s the aim of the lovely little short Bernie and Rebecca, which elliptically plays the part of a comedy at either end of its running time, while segueing sweetly into more…
Condensing a love story into a mere twelve minutes of screen time poses some considerable challenges for the filmmakers and actors, but it can make for very lean storytelling devoid of any fat. That’s the case with Stutterer, which manages to cover the main bases of the classic romantic movie formula within its very tight…
Cinema as a mode of fabricated observation can be fascinating because, unless instructed to do so, the camera doesn’t judge. This is the key to entering Patrick Vollrath’s powerful domestic drama Everything Will Be Okay, which chronicles a divorced father’s initially fun day out with his daughter during which life-altering decisions are made. The movie…
The laser-like focus afforded by a compact running time is used to intensely impactful use in Phil Sheerin’s North, a 20-minute short about a teen boy wrestling with the inevitability of his ailing mother’s impending death. It’s rough subject matter, bleak and tragic, the kind of thing that would tempt many filmmakers to tug at…
