My usual annual viewing stretched to ten films this year as these shorts are available for free viewing on the BFI Player until 25 October. Spoiler: this year's winner of Best Short was Aman.
I actually thought Rahul Roye's Aman was among the weakest films of this year's crop, more of a proof of concept than a fully thought out short, but I was not on the panel!
My favourites were two animations: Antonin Niclass's captivating claymation, Into the Forest, featuring three mechanical apes that come to life and seek a home, and the artful Daughters of the Late Colonel, Elizabeth Hobbs's adaptation of a Mansfield story.
A Kind of Purity, directed by Theo Shivdasani, is a jet black satire on the contemporary art world in London, which sparked guffaws of recognition. Landscapes of Shame, by Patrick Hough, shows great promise but is overlong and a bit full of itself as it grapples with the lost history of Ireland encompassing wolves as well as people. He does have a way with words, dropping pearls of wisdom such as, "Language is a form of resurrection."
Much briefer is Mon Taxi, Meriem Sakrouhi's farewell to her father via a series of phone calls.
A good crop this year. Catch them while you can.
The shorts are available online until 25 October.