Pictured above: a still from Healer.
The 2025 Short Cuts programme kicks off with several shorts that speak to the various ways people carve out spaces for themselves and others in a sometimes harsh world.
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In Will Niava’s Jazz Infernal, a young trumpeter named Koffi (Ange Eric N’Guessan) has just arrived in Montreal from Côte d’Ivoire to a somewhat chilly reception. His unhelpful aunt berates him over the phone for both being late and not immediately knowing his way around the city. As he tries to make his way to her, a chaotic first night begins when he stops by a jazz club, where he’s identified as the son of a legendary trumpeter. As a story of someone still searching for their identity and trying to make their way in a new place, Jazz Infernal has an assured point of view and a proper amount of energy to put viewers into Koffi’s shoes.
Produced in part with the mentorship of Werner Herzog, Shervin Kermani’s Ramón Who Speaks to Ghosts is a charming mockumentary about a sound recordist (Pedro Moisés Herrera Concepción) who listens to the centuries old spirits of those who perished in a volcanic eruption on Las Palmas island. The charm in Kermani’s film comes from the low key joy Ramón has for his job, feeling his emotions so deeply that one can easily believe his tales. The ghosts have their say, and although the viewer never hears them, it seems like they (mostly, with one hilarious exception) appreciate his authenticity.
Arvin Belarmino and Kyle Danielle Romero’s Agapito takes viewers inside the lives of pin setters and ball returners at an old school duckpin bowling alley in The Philippines. As they work behind the giant wall resetting pins by hand, the manager (Nour Hooshmand) receives word that they’re going to have to close early for the arrival of a VIP. The identity and reason for this mystery person’s visit is both moving and unexpected, with Romero and Belarmino offering viewers a loving ode to the power of performance and togetherness.
Dorothea Sing Zhang’s docu-fictional hybrid A Small Fiction of My Mother is the second instalment in a trilogy from the filmmaker. Shot on 35mm film and brimming with texture and depth, Zhang observes Gene Qiaoyn, a major player with the Beijing Opera, as she wrestles with loneliness while going about her daily routines. This short started off as a documentary, but slowly started incorporating fictional elements to make a story that depicts routine as both a help and hindrance to happiness.
Swan Song and Ever Deadly documentarian Chelsea McMullan shifts into fictional territory with Healer, the story of a terminally ailing cancer patient (Fiona Highet) experimenting with alternative healing methods with the help of her daughter (Shaelynn Estrada). Healer is a a story of two halves, starting with the pair attending a seminar/sermon of sorts delivered by a child savant (an exceptional Billy North Glouberman), and building to a profound movement piece by its conclusion, where it becomes fully apparent why McMullan hired dancer (and one of Swan Song’s subjects) Estrada for their latest film. Healer conveys the frustrations people struggle with as they approach the end of their lives; searching for positivity and fearfully facing the unknown, both alone and with others. It also intriguingly wonders which is more powerful: outspoken belief or unspoken doubt.
Oscar nominated animators Chris Lavis and Maciek Szczerbowski create painterly visions with marionette-like stop motion creations in The Girl Who Cried Pearls, a tragic parable told by a grandfather to his granddaughter. Recounting his hardscrabble childhood as a orphan in old Montreal, he remembers squatting in an empty apartment, next door to a young girl who lived with her abusive, uncaring family. She begins to cry pearls from her eyes. The boy is able to gather what he can in hopes of getting some money from an unscrupulous pawnbroker for his next meal (and to help bring some small happiness to the girl), but the greedy shopkeep wants all of these pearls so he can get rich quick. It’s a bleak tale of hardship, but it looks outstanding and builds to a fun twist.
DISC, from Black Winston Rice, is part gross out comedy, part empathetic ode to allyship. A man and a woman (Jim Cummings and the Rice’s co-writer Victoria Ratermanis) have a one night hook-up towards the end of a convention, and in the morning she’s eager to leave so she can give a presentation and avoid any awkward morning after smalltalk. But as she’s getting ready to head out, the woman experiences some rather severe complications with a feminine hygiene product, needing her one-night-stand’s help to get things literally and figuratively flowing again. Sure, there’s some gross-out humour elements to DISC, but thanks to the performances from Cummings and Ratermanis, the film becomes a poignant and good natured look at an unusual form of human kindness; the kind that comes from two people helping each other through a situation where they could both look pretty foolish and coming out the other side with great relief.
