Short films succeed where features cannot afford to try

Finding financing for a feature-length movie can be difficult when the subject could confuse viewers or stir disapproval. A short film faces a different calculation, and that is what allows it to take on stories that would struggle to attract feature investors.

Short films now have their own ecosystem, with their own festivals, their own online audiences, and a solid foothold at big film gatherings. The recent edition of the London Film Festival included over 80 shorts, spanning all kinds of subjects.

Consider what eight minutes can hold. Mon Taxi, by Miriam Scrohe, a New York based filmmaker who was born and raised in Morocco, is made up of phone messages she recorded for her dad following his death. She describes the film as continuing their conversation, an extension of the regular phone calls they shared about her daily life while he still lived in Morocco. After it was accepted in London, she crossed the ocean to be there in person and began mounting an Oscar campaign.

The same pattern holds for other difficult topics. Geronto, a British short, portrays an age gap relationship involving two men with a wide age difference. Its screenplay comes from Christopher Sherwood, an actor who says he is himself in an intergenerational relationship, and who hopes the film helps viewers who are cynical about such relationships to see them in a different light. The documentary short Listen follows a man recording wildlife sounds in the hope the audio will draw a reaction from his mom, who lives with failing memory.

Festival programmers welcome showing such short form work because it can often be unusual and original. For filmmakers, the practical lesson is that a story too intimate or controversial to find funding as a feature may still find viewers in short form.