TIFF’s fifth Short Cuts programme takes its viewers from all over – from Canada to France and back. There’s even a short film from the Philippines and the people who are not who they seem. A lot of wacky shorts in this programme but it gets normal eventually, which I have theories about. Let’s begin this trip together, and the best way to do so is to start from one’s home.

First on the programme is James Rathbone and Mike Feswick’s Solemates, a fever dream of a short. Andrew (Garrett Hnatiuk), who works at a restaurant, walks into a shoe store that William (Richard Jutras) runs. The short closes up to Andrew’s face as his big feet stretches those new, super tight shoes. Emphasis on the big and the tight as those are just the few innuendoes that this short uses. Warm cinematography depicting a subject matter that feels as much of short that’s as much Inside Out. It feels hypocritical to criticise this short for reasons that people who know me should know by now. A reveal and the end comes way too late, which is the short’s only unfortunate spot.

The most succinct film in the programme and the fest is Joris Oprins, Marieke Blaauw, and Job Roggeveen’s short Quota. The animation short has Carice van Houten and others voicing characters in a world on the brink. To stop people from the brink is the titular app telling everyone the amount of energy everyone uses. Tired of the rules, a bunch of male influencers decide to use energy that overtly skews Earth’s balance. Chaos ensues in a short that has a message I believe but is also funny as eggs. Hashtag biased but this is the programme’s best.

The programme then mixes it up from having something short to the second longest short here, Vox Humana. Before I talk about the short film itself, this is the director’s name – Don Josephus Raphael Eblahan. For Filipinos, ‘Don’ is like the male version of someone named Princess who’s a rich man’s child in nursing. But he’s a filmmaker, the short film depicts two biologists, Esther (Sasa Cabalquinto) and Nico (Nathan Carreon Lim). From a distance, they’re studying a feral man (Bruce Venida) in a work that has its beautiful mysteries. Credit is also due to its use of fantasy and science fiction elements within a tight budget.

From my home country, the programme comes back to Canada, as the protagonist in Theodore Ushev’s The Wolf is a being making it out of the tundra. Blurred lines run through the screen, a lone pup trying to survive after a man kills their entire family. I give it credit for being the most normal short in a programme full of weirdness. Press materials describe the man as old but the animation style makes him seem like he’s in his forties. Animation here serves as the twenty first century version of impressionism, although I much prefer the original. The programme’s ‘worst’ but I’m not too mad at it.

The programme sticks with relative normalcy even if it goes back to depicting life outside Canada. In Aida Neither, from director Elisa Gilmour, has Leila (Lina Alsayed) staying at her brother Amine’s (Hajri Gaghouch). They’re there to mourn, but Leila already talks about how people where she lives wants her to return. Takes a while for the film to say what it’s about but it touches on characters’ complex identities. I can only imagine the difficulties of being one of the few Arabs who live in Corsica. The cinematography here has the right amount of brightness necessary in depicting a life that’s scattered to see. Alsayed and Gaghouch, from what I see, are first time actors, fleshing out their roles with great efficiency.

The programme’s last and longest film is a Canadian, French, and Ethiopian production taking place in rural Ethiopia. It’s an (a)typical day in Beza Hailu Lemma‘s Alazar when its protagonist Tessema (Surafael Teka) wakes up. He looks at a picture of his father, who accidentally dies but is absent from his grave. The community, dwindling for several reasons, divides itself because of what they think happened to the late patriarch. Many of them think this disappearance is a holy sign but Tessema thinks it’s good old grave robbing. This short is a bit long but it shows that God isn’t flashy but they show up.