The Bafta tradition of giving a touring release to their nominated short films gets more interesting and more valuable by the year: the portmanteau film lives again. The 2017 anthology of live-action and animated shorts is a mixed bunch, inevitably, but there’s a lot to enjoy – and admire – in this non-parochial, globally minded selection. For me the most successful is Daniel Mulloy’s Home, a through-the-looking-glass journey into the issue of refugees, starring Jack O’Connell and Holliday Grainger. It’s a bold, simple idea, executed with commitment and ambition. Charlotte Regan’s Standby is a funny, clever study of two coppers that persuasively tells the story of a tender and protective friendship. Consumed is a documentary by Richard John Seymour about the Chinese factories churning out stuff such as Christmas decorations for the west: there’s an amazing shot of the massed container ships. The Party by Andrea Harkin was an impressively realised slice of tension-filled life in West Belfast in the 70s. Another very worthwhile selection.
The shorts vying for this year’s award are a varied selection that tell stories of Europe’s migrant crisis, factories in China and Troubles-era Belfast
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