The Chop (United Kingdom, Comedy, Directed by Lewis Rose) . Courtesty of DC Shorts

Short films aren’t just for short attention spans. The best examples of the form can be just as effective and powerful as long-form cinema—in a condensed form. Friday night, DC Shorts Wins! gives you a taste of the best in contemporary short film making with two programs culled from the 2016 DC Shorts festival.

Launched in 2003, DC Shorts has been one of the few festivals that focuses on short films, although the medium seems more conducive to the festival experience. Cramming feature length narratives back to back can be a daunting task for the casual film goer, but the beauty of DC Shorts lies in the opportunity to traverse a variety of styles and subject matter in brief, digestible chunks.

Founder Jon Gann created the festival in response to what he perceived as a lack of attention on short films and the people who make them. Over the last 14 years, DC Shorts has filled that niche, showcasing the work of filmmakers from a variety of skill sets and locales, and throwing significant support to the local film community. And it’s more than just an annual event. The festival has since expanded into a year round series of programs that exemplify the ethos that’s made it such an important entity in the industry.

Last month, DC Shorts Laughs focused primarily on comedic shorts, with live stand-up filling out the programming. March brings Mentors, which will feature weekend courses for budding filmmakers to learn more about the craft. This weekend’s program, DC Shorts Wins!, continues a series that revisits the best the previous year had to offer.

The DC Shorts Archives are chock full of some 400 titles from the festival’s history. Yet the ideal way to view these films isn’t streaming on your laptop, but sitting in an auditorium with a packed crowd and a big screen.

Which makes this weekend’s program a welcome addition to the line-up. Every year, busy audience members struggle to catch all of the festival programming, and if word of mouth builds buzz on any of the shorts, it’s sometimes too late to catch them in the theater. While this weekend marks the opening of three programs of Oscar-nominated shorts at Landmark Theatres, this local festival may in fact be the better entertainment value. DC Shorts Wins! is a smartly curated cross-section of what makes the festival such a blast, presenting a melange of comedy, drama, and documentary shorts.

Frogman (U.S., Documentary, Patrick Humphrey), Courtesy of DC Shorts

The Friday night event features two different programs, each running 90 minutes. Here’s a brief taste of what’s in store:

• “Frogman” – As a child, Patrick Humphrey had no idea his father was a spy. How much can we really know someone through the stories we inherit? This short documentary is a fascinating look at the duplicity of espionage from the perspective of a son filling in the gaps left by his secretive father.
• “Rated” – Maggie must find the courage to own up to her behavior when she wakes to find every adult has received a YELP-like star rating floating over their head. This comic short takes a simple, Black Mirror-esque premise and mines it for maximum humorous and horrific effect.
• “The Chop” – Yossi, a charismatic Kosher butcher who loses his job, pretends to be Muslim in order to get work at a Halal butcher shop. The culture-clashing concept is played for humor of course, but the film is also a great delivery system for relevant cultural observations.
• “Rosa” – A devoted maid for an upper class family has a special place in the heart of Daniel, the family’s six-year-old boy. But when tragedy strikes, she is reminded of her true place in the family. This powerful drama from Columbia about class conflict could not be more timely in Trump’s America.
• “An Average Story” – When Avi Cohen is told by the Central Bureau of Statistics that he is the most average man who ever lived, his life is turned upside down. Avi’s story calls to mind the absurdism of Woody Allen’s early comedies, but with a unique tone and execution.

DC Shorts Wins will have two shows, at 7 p.m. and 9 p.m. at Miracle Theater, 535 8th Street SE. Buy tickets here.