There are a few shorts during this festival that will make its viewers think – whether or not those films will be successful is another story, like short The End. Director and writer Niki Lindroth von Bahr is the brainchild behind this bleak short film. Here, she depicts anthropomorphic animals (voices of Noomi Rapace, etc.). They’re caught in an European airport, purgatory on earth. One scene, for instance, has a woman hesitating to follow a security agent’s reasonable orders. Lindroth von Bahr’s depressive tendencies may not be for everyone but animation is decent. Her style, at least, captures an attention to detail to create a world just like ours.

Armenian history is obscure, especially recent history, which Ophelia Harutyunyan’s short Fried Chicken and Strip Checkers captures. A family visits their father in jail, or they try to anyway, bringing fried chicken enough to feed his cell block. By accident, the family’s daughter Amalia (Lucie Simonyan) discovers a haunting, scarring truth about the Armenian prison system. This film takes an impressionistic and personal approach to what seems like a political system that silences opposition. All cops are bad, but thankfully, the film ends in a bittersweet way that feels equal parts cheeky and innocent.

A small class of adult artists look at a strange man in Camille Summers-Valli’s new short film UNTITLED WOMAN. But if one guesses from the title, the short isn’t about him and is about an unnamed artist (Julianne Nicholson). Despite her wanting to leave, the teacher (Charles Melton) tells her to stay. The newest student who walked into the class by accident, it’s eventually her time to show her work. This short film is atmospheric, its discordant score and screenplay appearing to have careful choreography within. There’s also interesting blocking happening as it populates its grey background with colourful characters.

Julie Charette’s The Comet has a story that doesn’t make sense the same way life doesn’t make sense at times. Things just happen and it’s up to the characters, like people in real life, to find the connective tissues within. Francoise (Camille Rivard) comforts her brother Emile (Laurent Lemaire) after a traumatic incident. As she comforts him, he dreams of the cat that would have stayed alive. Its worldview of the randomness of life complements its animation aesthetic – I love my 2D animation. Colours subtly shift like winds blowing, a breeze of a childhood summer that will slip from their fingers soon.

Sophia Smith directed Between Late April and Early May, featuring actors whose names are on the tip of my tongue. These actors play couples, sick of waiting their turn on another couple hogging good, Insta friendly space in High Park. These spaces are optimal in that west end Toronto park because of the title that suggests cherry blossom season. There’s a warmth to this short that reminds one of Harris Savides’ work, aesthetic necessary to capture hipsters. Thank God I’m mostly home. There’s also a reveal at the end that made me laugh, a break from the other sad reveals from other shorts.

Around nighttime, Evelyn (Martina Kelades) runs into George (Thomas Antony Olajide), her neighbour. She’s keeping her distance because there are things about him that make her think that he’s an evil witch. Amy Mielke and Brittney Gavin are behind the short film The Dough Man, which needs nighttime lighting. The acting is stilted but that comes with shorts that deal with the supernatural. The rest of what I’m going to say about this film will spoil it so I’m trying to telepathically tell you something. Otherwise, it’s a fun short that competently brings the otherworldly into someone’s normal life.

The shorts at this year’s Short Cuts gives its viewers a window into how others make their humble living. Or perhaps, that’s a blanket statement specific to Beans and Belief, from filmmaker Tenzin Sedon. This piece of docufiction follows a Bean Seller (Phurbu Tsering) walking by walls of Tibetan city streets. As someone who did work in sales, I have pointers, but his monotone delivery makes sense to me. On another note, docufiction seems like a synonym for ‘slice of life’ where nothing really happens. But as the short progresses one can understand the Bean Seller’s dilemma, living on occupied land.

I conducted research on Kalainithan Kalaichelvan and he seems to make movies about big decisions. His newest short film Till The Milk Runs Dry is no different in depicting a traditional female Indian dancer. This particular traditional dancer has to choose between her artform and the child growing inside of her. This short throws every cinematic trick in the book but that makes for breathtaking work, producing deep imagery. The depth of field in the climactic shot is one to behold and I’m so happy people get to see it in theatres. And all of these shots help the viewers feel this woman’s anguish and I’m here for every second.

One of the more remarkable shorts playing at TIFF this year is Almost Pink, from Justine Prince. It’s about a Quebecois girl, Solene (Maïka Ferron), who has a transaction with a Client (Frédéric Lemay). I’m being careful about this short’s synopsis because this website is not going to end up on a list. Anyway, one can assume what happens when there are two characters, one without power. Most films can have automatic high marks just on how messed up the premise is and this short film does. The filmmaking here is effective – all we need is a face that gives genuine emotions the way Ferron does here.

Buddies is also memorable thanks to characters like Aidan (Mercer Goddard) and Lucas (Freddie Markelov). Director Fraser Wolfe depicts these two supposed best friends at a sleepover during ski season. Aidan chooses to bully Lucas even though there are other feelings there, feelings that he can’t really express. Some nighttime cinematography is a bit off, the second time I’m seeing it at the shorts during this year’s fest. And films about suburbanite white boys are 50/50 for me – Canada keeps making too many. Nothing will ever top Fauve, but at least the emotions here come across as genuinely devastating.

Love conquers all in Sameh Alaa and Robin Vouters’ The Day I Smoked a Cigarette with my Father. There’s always an introspective feel when an adult makes a semi-autobiographical film about childhood. Of course,  this is about a reunion between Egyptian Ibrahim reuniting with his estranged family. The A-plot is how eldest son Alaa thinks about this return, Alaa resenting his father’s incarceration. But it takes time to see how Ibrahim reacts to seeing his resilient wife for the first time in six years. There’s also a lightness to the animation short that depicts Egypt in 1965, a country with hope.

The short film Aman comes from director and writer Rahul Roye, about an Indian trans man. After having sex with his regular partner (Guntaaj Deep Singh), Aman (Kabir Maan) gets pregnant. This is the second time that a TIFF selection covered this subject matter, the first being I Am Mario. Both are good, that first film is better, but come to think of it, Mario doesn’t have a queer community. A DL partner is still part of the community, as well as Aman’s trans woman roommate (Sirat Taneja). Although even within that little enclave, there are some things that trans people sadly endure alone.

Antoine Bourges‘ Pacific Spirit is teeming with life, depicting nature and two university aged students. These students have an assignment – to capture, in photography, one’s relation to unceded land. The film seems pretty simple, as it’s basically searching the forests for the right spot to photograph. Art, in ways, is reading within what the consumer experiences, subject to people’s diverging thoughts. Sometimes, that’s all it takes, watching the verdant nature and people seeming small within vastness. The film doesn’t have to answer all its questions but it gives its viewers enough about its characters.

Speaking of answers, that’s what Into the Betaverse has, taking British lad Dave (Corin Silva) on a voyage. An online voyage where he follows his friend Gary (Andrew Ellis) into the titular virtual reality to help him. As it turns out, Gary is a stud, with a girlfriend, in the betaverse and looks down on him for being basic. On the one hand, Dave doesn’t deserve a friend like Gary, who will dump him because of his basic status. On the other hand, people in real life are social climbers and films should reflect that. This short answers the question of what one does when they find themselves in this kind of a situation.

Short stories have to get their stories out because they obviously don’t have the luxury of running time. Fifteen minutes is usually what it takes for something like Koden’n to tell its story of a fraught couple. This couple is Fanfan and Lou-Anne (Wasiu Salami and Victoria Diamond), trying to conceive a child. Nothing works, especially Western medicine, but I don’t see the characters trying anything left field. The ending here also seems purposefully ambiguous, as if relying heavily on what the camera omits. But the close-ups on both Fanfan and Lou-Anne are enough to express the dread that they’re feeling.