Last year, the Guardian offered a 31-day literary diet to feed our souls. This year, it’s a 31-day short film diet to nourish our minds. The idea is to offer short films “aimed at enriching our lives, not depriving it of small joys” and that are “not all necessarily feelgood or inspirational in the conventional sense, but offer a stimulating dose of beauty, invention, expansive thinking or occasional concentrated joy.” Challenge met. Even though it’s not always easy to follow the one-a-day scheme, I love the idea of this post-Christmas “advent” calendar. The diversity of the suggested short films is terrific.
I will pick three highlights. Oscar Sharp’s The Kármán Line, the story of a woman that has a terminal disease that causes her to lift off the ground, Mufasa’s Friday Dance from Mufasa and Hypeman, to look at every time you need a lift up, and least A Single Life by Job Roggeveen, Joris Oprins & Marieke Blaauw, an animated film that makes you laugh and cry at the same time. Last but not least because loads of other short films on this list are excellent. I hope there will be a series of the same kind next year.