There’s much to recommend this small Hungarian movie about an elementary school choir. The film has several surprises, from its shift in focus from one main character to another as the movie progresses to its surprising conclusion. Along the way, Deák and Udvardy take us into the lives of two young girls and flesh out their friendship. The directors accomplish all this with outstanding cinematography and editing. The scenes in the children’s playground particularly stand out in this regard as they’re cut to the rhythms of children’s play songs. In addition to all this achievement, Sing is clearly pointing to moral about the importance of group solidarity when confronting unjust authority. It's is a real gem of a short film and shows what remarkable results can be achieved in this format.
★ Silent Nights (Aske Bang & Kim Magnusson) -- Denmark
Good intentions aside, Silent Nights is not a very successful short film. Bang and Magnusson can’t shoehorn their sprawling script into this format, so while they want to explore the relationship of a woman and her mother, the difficulties of being an immigrant in Denmark and the arc of a love relationship, they produce a choppy, unbelievable film that jumps from one melodramatic scene to the next with serious continuity issues. Addressing the plight of refugee immigrants is a worthy goal, but Silent Nights falls short of its ambitions.
★★★★★ Timecode
(Juanjo Giménez) -- Spain
There’s a contrivance at the center of this film that approaches being overly clever, but the whimsy and joy here make you forget that. Juanjo Giménez’s extremely short, low-budget project takes us into as dehumanizing an environment as can be imagined and shows us how art can take root and redeem it and those who work in it. And all the while, this short plays with the medium of film and video. Giménez manages an especially effective story shift late in Timecode, and the ending is priceless. Although a very short movie, this is a film you’ll think about afterwards, and a warm smile will come to your face because of the humanity it shows us.
Enemies Within (Sélim Azzazi) -- France
Enemies Within is another European short that deals with immigration. Azzazi takes us into a Kafkaesque world where a menacing government official bullies a man of Algerian extraction while creating terrorist conspiracies by innuendo. We see so much is lost in this film, not the least of which is the self-respect of the interviewee. It’s a talkie movie, perhaps based on a one-act play, but the acting is terrific and Azzazi uses cinematography and editing to intensify the psychological abuse we’re watching. It’s a timely warning about where the excesses of national security can take us.
Europeans excel at films that make you feel good, at films that are trite and clichéd but don’t seem like it. La Femme et le TGV is exactly this type of movie, only in the short genre. Jane Birkin, who is superb here, is a lonely, isolated older woman who gradually comes out of her loneliness through the film. In showing us this process, Von Gunten and Caduff do an expert cinematic job with a tight script and visuals that engage us throughout. You know how this film is going to end shortly after it starts, but it’s a pleasure getting there.
