The Cannes Film Festival is where world-class cinema comes to shine; Canada’s Not Short on Talent cohort of filmmakers will be there with eight new short films ready to do just that.
A common thread for these new films— including work from British Columbia, Manitoba, Ontario, Quebec, and Nova Scotia — is their select focus, and ultimately finesse, on form. The visual component of our visual medium, I am happy to report, demonstrated here exceptionally, something I dive into below.
Announcing Not Short on Talent for Cannes 2026:
BARE
Daphnée’s not very good at modern dating — especially the texting part. Are those food emojis supposed to be innuendo, or is she getting asked out to dinner? She fumbles through this app business after the swim classes she teaches, one of which is aquafitness for seniors. The ladies of the class, wise with their years, are eager to share (and very much bare) their naked truths about love and romance, including encouragement for Daphnée’s floundering attempts at taking, ahem, a nude selfie. Funny and clever — and yep, right out there — this short’s directors Lucy McNulty and Miranda MacDougall conclude sometimes life’s more enjoyable if you just let the towel drop.
burnT toast
Canadians across the country are feeling the ever-growing squeeze of the cost of living; in this documentary short shot by Brielle LeBlanc over a two-year period of time, a Haligonian haunt with the perfect hangout stoop is photographed lovingly and obliquely as residents, current and former, reflect on a house, vital also as a meeting space and a community space, faces major redevelopment in the name of “beautification.” Who knows what that means, but let’s agree: Halifax is lucky to have LeBlanc as one of its beholders.
GREEN FINGERS
An eco-conscious gardener walks into a thrift shop — wait, I promise, you haven’t heard this one — and picks up a second-hand cardigan in a lovely shade of green. So begins this tender and surprising short by Farhad Pakdel, which dedicates much of its runtime to absorbing every drop of Montreal’s finest summer light as it traces a touching romance story involving the cardigan’s previous owner. In bloom here are wry laughs and sincere emotion. (And jasmine.)
UN PETIT VENT FRAIS
In Alexandre Pelletier’s comedy short, four judges have a limited amount of time — and possibly breathable oxygen — as they are sequestered in a school basement to come to a consensus on the winner (or winners!) of a very serious youth talent show. Naturally, consensus is difficult, especially when conflicts of interest and / or large personalities overwhelm the judges’ conversation. Paced perfectly and with lots of laughs, this gust of Quebecois gusto is certain to ventilate any stuffy screening room.
THE HIVE
The Corsican countryside serves as the sunny backdrop for this suddenly dark and alienating sci-fi by director Clara Milo, who tells a story of a commune of women producing breast milk for their ancient elder prophet — and a delivery of milk that does not go as planned. Strong performances tracked through timeworn buildings and lush gardens provide momentum for a story that feels urgent and out of time, both from the future and from the past; always, however, a regularly visual exploration of women and their relationships with their maternal bodies, escape from which is looked at out through a window.
LE GOÛT DE M’ENFUIR
In 2000, Les Colocs frontman Dédé Fortin took his own life; at the time, his goddaughter, Madeleine, was just a small child. Madeleine might not have fully understood his absence then, but today, in this moving and important documentary short, she bravely admits filmmaker Emmanuel Rioux, an active and earnest listener, into her sessions with mental health professionals as she discusses her godfather’s death and processes the effect suicide, and a suicide attempt, have had on her own life. There is so much depth and humanity to this film that merits talking about, but of its many laudable highlights are the numerous moments that remind us of the joys and smiles that life can invoke.
A SPINNER
A woman is sexually assaulted on a quiet street in Tehran. Painfully, filmmaker Ava ShahNavaz was that woman in the recent past; her personal experiences of then attempting to report the incident to local police have been dramatized here, in this film, a truly major effort that watches behind our protagonist’s face, never to reveal her, as she suffers politely through useless officers who ask her to tread and retread her traumas and do their police work for them.
BETWEEN GRIEF AND GLORY
Winnipeg’s Basilica of Saint Boniface is a cathedral with a large circular aperture in its façade. Setting his film camera in front of it, director Ian Bawa, with experimental intuition, stages football players practicing with a quiet funeral happening elsewise off to the side, in the cathedral’s cemetery; as Bawa pans back and forth from scene to scene, overlaying film stock and allowing the stories and moments to mingle, he kicks a field goal right through the middle of something special.
As part of Telefilm Canada’s Not Short on Talent programme, these films are available to watch in the Short Film Corner Video Library.
Jake Howell is a Toronto-based writer and film programmer.
Meet the filmmakers in Cannes for a live on-stage presentation of their films at TEASE THE AUDIENCE, on Monday, May 18 at 11:30 am, at the Palais Stage (Level −1),a workshop moderated by Jing Haase, with Sonja Baksa (TIFF Short Cuts), Tara Karajica (PÖFF Shorts) and Jaime Manrique (BOGOSHORTS) in attendance.
