Now at the midway point in the festival, I'm happy to report that I barely cringed once during International Shorts V "The Only Hope That Remains Is The Camera Itself" -- hands down the best and strongest lot of films I've seen all week. Each one bears a foreboding sense of apocalyptic undercurrent that suggests the disintegration of familial, social and ecological order. In other words, these works are thoroughly pessimistic.

Highlights include: The General Returns From One Place To Another by Michael Robinson, comprises of panning macro shots, a haunted woman staring directly at us and a looping pop tune (makes little sense but packs a lot of dread and paranoia into 11 minutes); Naked by Pawel Wojtasik, closely observes a group a naked mole rats with a heightened, almost surreal detail (think Microcosmos meets Aliens); Because of the War by Jennet Thomas, which left me in stitches with its darkly comic absurdist episodes having something to do with a world gone horribly, horribly mad, and all narrated tongue-in-cheek style by an awkward yellow-coloured man -- I laughed until I realized how truly fucked-up it was, then I laughed some more.