Marissa Madsen and Sy Ozcan in “Hazel & Louis: Animal Agents”

The 12th Annual DC Shorts Festival & Screenplay Competition opens tonight with 100 short films in easily digestible chunks—from two-minute vignettes to 20-minute featurettes. As in recent years, festival programmers have accommodated moviegoers who may not be up to sifting through the diverse big-screen programs and offer a pass that provides online access to 24 hours of programming. DCist sampled but a fraction of this year’s programming and found a number of titles worth your your time, a few that leave you wanting more, and at least one or two that are best served as an excuse to visit the concession stand.
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Best in Show

Being at Home
Director Friedrich Tiedtke takes a page from the Dogme 95 manifesto in this natural light melodrama about a young woman who leaves an abusive boyfriend to return to her family. The cinematography is wildly inconsistent—especially in low-light situations—but this debut film has all the elements of a powerful feature-length drama. — Pat Padua

Billy the Kid
A U.K. adolescent takes on the anachronistic persona of a cowboy in this charming tale of school bullying, heroism, and finding your voice. At 15 minutes long, this short is the perfect length, taking just as much time to tell its story as it needs to and wrapping it up to walk off into the sunset. — Pat Padua

A Good Deal
A nerdy factory worker is obsessed with coupons in this French black comedy from director Denis Larzilliere. The film seems to be a condensed Punch-Drunk Love until it takes a darker turn. Impeccably photographed and sharply written, this is one of a handful of shorts in the festival that suggest a promising feature-length future. — Pat Padua

Hazel & Louis: Animal Agents
Directed by and starring Marissa Madsen and Sy Ozcan, this satire of the entertainment industry earns props just by daring to broach the cinematic prospect of Snow Dogs 2. This irreverent cabaret act (“my first experience with animals was slaughtering them for consumption.”) is one of the funniest films we previewed. — Pat Padua

On Dark Paths
Taking cues from 2014’s breakout horror film The Babadook, this Finnish film from director Paul Helin finds another shaggy-haired, troubled kid suffering from the stress of a mysterious boogeyman that only he can apparently see. This creepy short is highlighted by sharp production values—especially in the creature design department—but it’s stymied by a cliche twist ending that would make M. Night Shyamalan cringe. — Matt Cohen

Vlado
The fate of Brazilian journalist Vladimir Herzog (1937-1975) is dramatized in this featurette about intimidation of the press under a military dictatorship. This was the AFI thesis film for director Felipe Mucci, and the young filmmaker demonstrates a command of drama that makes you forget its low-budget. — Pat Padua

Christylez Bacon

Meet the People: Lives of the Not-so-Famous

An Unlikely Correspondence
A professor corresponds with a death-row inmate in this black and white short that feels like it doesn’t do justice to its subject’s inherent drama. — Pat Padua

1st Squad, 3rd Platoon
This year’s festival includes a number of StoryCorps vignettes by Rauch Bros. Animation. In under four minutes, Lance Corporal Travis Williams tells the harrowing story of being the only survivor of an attack on his platoon in Iraq. — Pat Padua

Christylez Bacon
This brief profile of the local hip-hop artist comes off like a commercial for an upcoming Woolly Mammoth production. In fact, it essentially was a commercial for a past Woolly Mammoth production, “We Are Proud to Present…” scored by Bacon. Nothing wrong with that, but the artist probably deserves a profile more substantial than an old commercial. — Pat Padua

Free Custom Poetry
This film is essentially a visit with Frankie Abralind, who writes poems for strangers from his perch on the National Mall. Abralind suggests that his conversations with clients may be the only time that day that anybody cared to ask how they were doing, but this short would have benefited from an example or two of his engagement with the public. — Pat Padua

A More Perfect Union
In this Rauch Bros. Animation of a StoryCorps tale, Theresa Burroughs tells a vivid story about voting in the Jim Crow South. — Pat Padua

A Letter to God

Just Long Enough

All You Do Is Shag
It’s a familiar scene: fancy restaurant, frustrated woman sitting alone, dude rolls in with an apologetic smirk and an bouquet expensive bouquet; he’s clearly in the dog house for something. This cute little film by Spanish director Manuel Arias Royo tries to flip the script on a typical “married couple with problems get into huge public fight” premise, but his attempt is a little too obvious. The airing of grievances turns out to be nothing more than what 100 percent of people would think are implications of a perfect marriage—he cleans and cooks elegant meals too often! All she wants to do is, uh, shag!—making Royo’s message that happiness is relative and largely unattainable a cliche that’s somewhat dull. —Matt Cohen

Chit-Chat
Water cooler talk at the office is perhaps the most soulless of pointless activities. “Weather, weather, weather, sports, sports, sports,” is literally the dialogue director Charles Rizzuto uses to emphasize this notion. But when one of the people at the water cooler presses his co-worker for advice on a legit problem, everyone has trouble following their mindless script. There’s not much of a conclusion to Rizzuto’s film other than “eh, no one wants to hear about anyone’s problems,” which is kind of sad, because the film sets up what could have been a truly insightful finale. — Matt Cohen

Knuckle Heads
Stunning fight choreography and a neat synth-driven throwback score highlight this short film which is, literally, a five-minute fight scene. — Matt Cohen

Big Boy
This amusing short takes on bad parenting, as a couple allow their young son to use a rest stop bathroom by himself. Don’t try this on the road! — Pat Padua

Barrio Boy
For some reason categorized as experimental, this tells the story of a Latino barber in Brooklyn who falls for a pasty Irish client. — Pat Padua

Boot
A four-minute skit about an incompetent criminal who tries to put a hostage in his trunk. Yes, trunk. This is an American-made short that uses the English slang as an affectation to distinguish an otherwise undistinguished concept. — Pat Padua

Companion
An animated tear-jerker about a puppy. I’m a sucker for puppies too, but I don’t need to be reminded of how cute and vulnerable puppies are by tender cute-and-sensitive-puppy acoustic soundtrack music. — Pat Padua

Help Point
This U.K. comedy follows a man and a woman who meet cute looking for their cars in a vast airport parking lot. It beats its single joke for 13 minutes, which is just long enough. — Pat Padua

A Last Farewell
This Swedish drama is a maudlin look at an elderly man coping with the loss of his husband. Like the Spanish short Anagnorisis, it takes a simple melodramatic concept but doesn’t quite find the drama to justify its short length. — Pat Padua

A Letter to God
In this Azerbaijan drama, a man who gets a bad diagnosis from his doctor writes a letter to God asking for more time. He gets an answer that might surprise you! Well maybe it’s not that surprising, but its an amusing enough conceit. — Pat Padua

Tumble Dry Low
I was hoping this would be a laundry metaphor, but seven minutes isn’t much time to tell the story of a down-and out widower living with his daughter in a trailer. This well-photographed short suffers from a minimal script that offers strong images but no compelling dramatic tension. — Pat Padua

if my hair could make movies, I’d be ruined

Doesn’t Work at Any Length

Anagnorisis
In this maudlin short from Spain, a mother tries to explain to her young daughter why they’re about to lose their house. — Pat Padua

Hair
A single quote from this self-absorbed inner drama, about a woman who’s so afraid she had a bad haircut that she vamps seductively at the camera, will suffice: “Damn you. Is it not just hair?” — Pat Padua

Game Night
Perhaps the most insufferably “Washington” film in this year’s fest, Game Night commits so many cardinal sins about D.C. culture you have to wonder if the filmmaker is actually a New Yorker. An eager intern attends a dinner party at her boss’s house with her Des Moines transplant boyfriend in tow. Immediately, the film’s “native Washingtonian” character—clad in a power suit, because of course—greets him with a smug “oh, you’re wearing a cardigan, like Mr. Rogers? Is that a $15 bottle of wine, I guess they must’ve been out of Two Buck Chuck!” It only gets worse from here. The two couples play what’s essentially a Washington-focused version of Pictionary, with each card depicting some noted D.C. locale that would suggest all this city has to offer is monuments and Ben’s Chili Bowl. At eight minutes, this film is perfectly timed for a bathroom break. — Matt Cohen

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September 10-20 at E Street landmark Cinema and US Navy Memorial. See the festival site for a detailed schedule of screenings or to buy an online pass.