Three Quebecois shorts help comprise the first homegrown shorts programme and the fest gives a second programme, and for this programme, we get… a fourth Quebecois short?

In Road 138 from Sarah Warren, onlookers cheer as Gaston Mogollones arrives in Repentigny. Repentigny is a Quebec suburb between Trois Rivieres and Montreal. Mogollones runs that distance. That distance is 138 kilometers, and he’s going that distance publicly for cancer awareness, a disease that almost killed his sister. Director Sarah Warren uses spontaneous film making in this documentary, mixing narration with on the spot interviews. There are also its share of smooth edits to make viewers feel the greenery one sees as one travels through Quebec.

From Quebec the second programme shows us Iran in For Dawn, from director and writer Setareh Saleh. A lot of things happen within its twenty minute running time, including the death of a Canadian Iranian. That Canadian Iranian, Sahar Azadi (Viona Moarefi) makes her friends like Mahtab (Kimia Kalantari) rally. A close-up heavy short, there are some crunchy moments, like ones where the lighting can be slightly better. But without giving things away, this short isn’t afraid to kill its darlings, like most feminist cinema these days.

Canadian Film Fest has two kinds of short films – ones belonging to programmes and ones that precede short films. One of those shorts is Niimi, a TIFF selection and I still have the same thoughts on it – ambiguous film language but a good story regardless. Blood Or Water, from director and writer Kristina Mileska, is also part of the latter group, depicting Dara (Irene Balaburski). She hurries out of her friend Annette’s (Peyton Boulley) pool. She runs to her apartment where her dad aka Tato (Tony Naumovski) lives. There, she doesn’t know whether she gets Tato’s abusive side or his helpful side, and growing up with such a man can change someone. The film making here is simple, maybe too simple. But Mileska’s attention to literary detail makes her a director to watch.

Another of those pre-feature shorts is Halfway Haunted, from triple threat Sam Rudykoff, centering on Jessica (Hannan Younis). Her rental house’s Ghost (Kristian Bruun) proposes that the both of them team up to scare off her new landlord Stephanie (Sugar Lyn Beard). I’m sure there are a lot of intellectual layers to this. Although, come to think of it, those layers intertwine with the emotional toll of being a renter. It has all of this in a comedy horror mashup about a woman who isn’t just dealing with one literal ghost but maybe some figurative ones. Some aspects come short of suspending disbelief, and when it comes to the short’s main conflict, I’m Team Ghost. But despite that, this is my favourite of the shorts.

The festival leaves the pre-feature shorts and returns to its fourth Homegrown Shorts programme with At The End. Co-writers and directors Isabelle Deluce and Lili Beaudoin imagine a world where Mr. Darcy (Avan Jogia) appears suddenly. Here, he accompanies a woman, Mona (Lucy McNulty, also a co-producer and co-writer) living by herself in what seems like a boat. A part of the brief here is that this takes place during the apocalypse. This explains how she, say, drinks her water. There are better ways for the short to express that part of the story even in a budget. But it gets a pass because it’s freaky.