The sad shorts are sometimes very gripping, and two of the best of the festival focus on the weight of navigating elder care and dementia through very different approaches. Stephen P. Neary Living with Vision it does this with animation, the kind that looks and feels like it’s taken from a storybook, but with a more serious fantasy than any children’s story. With the voice of James Cromwell as the narrator, the beauty of facing a dream and the heartache that comes from watching an elderly couple navigate the harsh realities of illness and the medical industry are both graciously emphasized.
It’s almost as if the obvious comparison to that story of painful devotion is a short film about a woman who desperately wants to escape the responsibility of caring for her husband. Amandine Thomas is an excellent host The Albatross maybe it will rub it the wrong way in how it deals with the exhaustion of watching someone slowly fade away, but its lead, Georgina Saldaña Wonchee, sells the pain she’s going through in an impressive way. It is very sad how a Mexican woman married to a white man not only lost her relationship with her culture, which forced her to wonder if her love has turned into hate.
Family relationships were ubiquitous in the shorts’ shows. Praise Odigie Paige A bird an excellent picture of two sisters, while a moving mother and daughter are at the heart of the sympathy of Ana Alejandra Alpizar. Norheimsund. The first was a quiet exchange, allowing us to glimpse what life is like for African immigrants living there. 1970s Virginia, while the latter accepted the talk of Cuban women who are willing and able to do anything to survive and take care of each other. There is dreaming again an amazing reality for both of them, but what’s really interesting is how much they go to capture what it’s like wait – for the pain to pass, for new life to emerge, or for life to continue as it always does.
The romantic, or maybe anti-romantic, shorts are just fun. Photo by Riley Donigan The stairs had me in stitches as I watched Betsey Brown open up more and more at the idea of falling down the stairs. Comparison with David Cronenberg The crash and the way it indulges in both the humor and the horror of watching people harm themselves for sexual pleasure is inevitable and appropriate. It’s brutal, from a committed performance down to some grooming work, endlessly funny, and, to be honest, a little likable. Such is the relationship between the two characters in Matthew Puccini Call back – a little short about what it’s like to truly believe that you are the better person (and, in this case, the doer) in your relationship. Any initial fun wears off as quickly as the fury sets in, but it’s a perfect showcase for a company that likes grief, with Justin H. Min and Michael Rosen committed to providing relief. Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf the truth.
