Compact Stories

Running time: N/A

Compact Stories returns to the festival lineup with four excellent, thought-provoking, and entertaining films. The subjects are naturally broad from film to film, to say the least, but each story stands on its own, apart from the whole. Compact Stories spans a mixed bag of subjects but can be boiled down to that all-encompassing connection between people, the temporal and permanent, the shameless and the humble. Estrangement between a hard working Jamaican immigrant and his adult son festers in Canadian David Sutherland's story. Internal family relations are under the microscope in a film by Bay Area director, Jeff Van Hanken, but in a less threatening environment. Fabienne Godet's import from France paints, with typical urbane French style, a tale of a young woman dealing with the death of her estranged husband. Of course, anything is possible in Greg Brooks' film where the title says it all.