Category: Shorts

BIFF15 REVIEW: Strange Bird [2015]

Jared Mobarak

“Happy Birthday, Emma” After their screening premiere of Strange Bird at the Buffalo International Film Festival, co-writers Daniel Mecca (who also co-directs with Timothy Ringwood) and Conor O’Donnell explained how much of the short’s final cut was found in the editing room. This makes perfect sense as there’s no dialogue for almost the entire first half, replaced instead by quick vignettes delving into Detective Henry Harker’s (Justin Osterthaler) fragile state of mind. It’s a boldly relevant choice because we don’t need words to understand this man’s pain as he travels…

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REVIEW: The Brink [2015]

Jared Mobarak

“There is no way across” When you think about the vastness of our brains and the myriad roads of memory leading down rabbit holes of hopes, aspirations, fears, and regret, it can become a daunting proposition. How often do we get lost along those paths—recalling moments from our pasts, failures that keep our anxiety and insecurities so high we refuse to believe there could be anything else? It’s a desolate wasteland where we must face the truth, an adversarial force telling us we cannot reach our potential just as outside…

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REVIEW: Driven [2015]

Jared Mobarak

“You need to start being there for him” Writer/director Ali Y. Akarcesme‘s latest short Driven is full of questions that may or may not need answers. It deals with Nicole (Sandy Pasquale) and her son Josh (Joseph Minogue) trying to accept a new dynamic at home without the man who had been playing husband and father when not drinking or yelling. She has retreated inward, passing the time baking and taking care of the house while awaiting a buyer for the large truck parked in her driveway. Josh holds out…

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REVIEW: Total Performance [2015]

Jared Mobarak

“You’re never going to see me again” The premise behind Sean Meehan‘s latest short is fascinating with its titular business Total Performance providing a service that supplies actors who spar with customers seeking a dress rehearsal for whatever difficult conversation they’ve yet to work themselves up to starting. We meet a distraught husband in need of a stand-in for his cheating wife so he can air the frustration he hasn’t been able to direct at her, a gentleman working through the crisis of conscience of having to fire his best…

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TIFF15 REVIEW: Waves ’98 [2015]

Jared Mobarak

“It feels like everything is stuck in a loop” Downtown Beirut is Waves ’98‘s lead character Omar’s (Elie Bassila)—a virtual, teenage stand-in for writer/director Ely Dagher—”white whale”. It’s a world he has yet to experience close-up, relegated to peering over and through concrete buildings from his safe suburban rooftop at a city split in two between the Muslim West and Christian East. Safety comes at the price of monotony and boredom, a perpetual news cycle of chaos and talk for peace that does nothing but instill fear or posit empty…

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TIFF15 REVIEW: Maman(s) [2015]

Jared Mobarak

“I’m drowning in it now” Young Aida (Sokhna Diallo) is forced to process a lot on the day her father (Eriq Ebouaney‘s Alioune) returns to Paris from Senegal after two months away. First is the joyous laughter of mom (Maïmouna Gueye‘s Mariam) and her friends burning an herbal aphrodisiac up her dress. Next is the happiness of seeing him finally walk through the door with love and an embrace. Before anyone can get too excited, though, smiles turn to confusion at the fact he hasn’t come alone. With him is…

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TIFF15 REVIEW: Viaduc [Overpass] [2015]

Jared Mobarak

“Your brother’s plane arrives at 5 PM” Writer/director Patrice Laliberté‘s short film Viaduc [Overpass] relies heavily on our suppositions as the viewer. And it does so to perfection. To us Mathieu (Téo Vachon Sincennes) has done nothing to earn the benefit of the doubt. Not only do we meet him sneaking out to illegally spray paint a bridge over the nearby interstate, he’s willfully difficult with his parents as a rule at home. He smiles when he escapes imprisonment and projects can’t-be-bother frustration when his mom (Sandrine Bisson) asks him…

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TIFF15 REVIEW: かくれんぼ [Hide & Seek] [2015]

Jared Mobarak

“I can’t be like mom” There are no easy answers when it comes to psychological and emotional conditions. What a “normal” person believes to be so easy could very well prove impossible for another no matter how mundane or seemingly harmless the task might appear. Kimie Tanaka‘s short かくれんぼ [Hide & Seek] depicts this struggle via a young man named Kotaro (Kuniaki Nakamura) who hasn’t left his home in over a decade. Shut-in his room except to use the bathroom, he even waits until his mother (Sachiko Matsuura‘s Mitsuko) leaves…

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TIFF15 REVIEW: Dragstrip [2015]

Jared Mobarak

“So hike up your pants and tighten your shoes. We’re going racing soon.” The Toronto International Film festival programmers are selling Daniel Claridge and Pacho Velez‘s short documentary Dragstrip as an “exhilarating blast of raw Americana”, but I’m not sure if it isn’t actually evidence of our affinity with the mundane instead. Shot at the Lebanon Valley Dragway in Upstate New York, the film captures a slice of racing life in static shots aurally filled with the roar of engines and voice of a loudspeaker. We don’t actually see the…

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TIFF15 REVIEW: Sonámbulo [The Sleepwalker] [2015]

Jared Mobarak

“Green, how I want you green.” Animator Theodore Ushev embraces yet another visual style to treat us with at the Toronto International Film Festival. From conté crayon images rotoscoped atop Jafar Panahi in 2012’s Joda to the Cubist/Constructivist homage of 2013’s Gloria Victoria, his latest Sonámbulo [The Sleepwalker] delves into Abstract Expressionism bearing to mind an amalgam of Arshile Gorky‘s painting and Alexander Calder‘s mobile sculptures. It’s all geometric shapes, mostly with curved edges, each dotted as though fabric sewn with seams collaged and brought to life in a gyratory…

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TIFF15 REVIEW: Semele [2015]

Jared Mobarak

“Out of the way, kid” As children we crave time with our parents—especially when quality family outings prove few and far between. The titular Semele (Vasiliki Kokkoliadi) in Myrsini Aristidou‘s short film will do anything to force some face-to-face, even going so far as hitch-hiking her way to the carpentry plant where her father works to acquire his signature on a school form. Mom’s nowhere to be seen and who knows how long it’s been since Semele and Aris (Yannis Stankoglou) were even in the same room together considering a…

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