Bafta is keeping alive the tradition of the portmanteau movie by anually releasing all of the shorts nominated for awards in their British short film and animation categories as a package touring UK cinemas. Once again, there are some off moments, but it’s a sparky collection with some great ideas.
My favourite was an animation, so often a genre which tends to be whimsical and nebulous: Daisy Jacobs’ The Bigger Picture is an engrossing study of two brothers who confront their own lives and mortality as their elderly mother approaches death. Oscar Sharp’s The Karman Line is a fascinatingly surreal and also moving fantasy-parable on the theme of death and bereavement – and also, mysteriously, on what it feels like to die.
Olivia Colman gives a typically excellent performance as a hard-working wife and mum who finds that she is gradually levitating higher into the air, and there is nothing to be done except knock a hole in the ceiling and let her float up into space. Boogaloo and Graham, directed by Michael Lennox, is a lovely, charming, funny film set in late-70s Belfast about two kids who are given pet chickens by their errant dad. Could this be expanded into a full feature?
