CIFF 2024 Review: A selection of shorts
By Ansharah Shakil, September 30 2024—
Audiences are spoiled for choice with all the feature-length films available to watch at the Calgary International Film Festival (CIFF), which took place from Sept. 19-29 for its 25th anniversary, but equally intriguing are the many short films presented this year.
Shorts are shown in the festival’s venues and then available to stream online, collected into thematically appropriate packages. One example is the Shorts: Nobody Wants To Be Lonely collection, eight films all centring around forms of love. Nobody Wants To Be Lonely manages to encompass an incredible variety of emotion, with films that are uniquely vulnerable and ready to make you laugh, cry or both.
The package begins with The Kiss, a 2023 Algerian film by Azedine Kasri making its Alberta premiere at CIFF. The Kiss is about two Algerian lovers, Meriem and Reda, who have yet to kiss and aren’t allowed to in public. Among numerous interruptions to their attempts include sitting together on the bus, hands inching closer until someone sits between them, in an excellently tension-filled scene. The beautiful sunset and shadow-tinged ending shot is, of course, of that final kiss, but the road to the finale is entertainingly unexpected.
The next film in the package is Avril Besson’s Queen Size, a French film about two girls, one named Marina and the other named Charlie, the first selling the latter a mattress. Marina ends up helping Charlie haul the mattress back to her home, all through the bright, sunny streets of Paris. Marina does this with ease; on her end, Charlie’s humorous struggles lifting the mattress lead her to asking for breaks. Along the way to Charlie’s apartment, the two learn a number of things about each other — Marina is moving back home because she lost her job, Charlie’s grandmother just died — before they learn each other’s names, at the very end. The set-up is promising, but the execution is even better, sweetly spontaneous and funny. Raya Martigny Martigny as Marina is insanely charismatic, and the chemistry between her and India Hair as Charlie is immediately winning. Throughout its runtime, Queen Size is never boring, and always lovely.
Other films in the package include American films Some Kind of Paradise, an interesting interrogation of intimacy which depicts the life of a barman at an Arkansas line-dancing bar who ends up connecting with a Hollywood actor on Grindr, and The Puzzle Palace, a documentary-style film on a retired old couple with a passion for puzzles. Canadian short The Sweater ends the collection, and two animated shorts in the collection are the quirky Discotheque and the stop-motion film Bug Diner.
Then there’s Chairs, a British film directed, written and produced by James Hughes, making its Canadian premiere at CIFF. Chairs follows the tale of a man recounting his strange fixation on chairs to his new psychiatrist. It’s uncomfortably hilarious and completely unhinged in the best way. Along with the witty script, the superb, charming performances elevate the humour even further — Georgina Campbell does a perfect rendition of the dry, skeptical psychiatrist and Akemnji Ndifornyen is incredible at saying the weirdest things completely seriously.
Nobody Wants To Be Lonely is just one of many excellently curated shorts packages that were offered by CIFF this year. To learn more about the shorts in this package and the festival, visit their website here.