Short reviews of films from this year’s DC Shorts Film Festival

In several of these films, characters struggle to reconcile where they are and where they want to be. About half of the time, I wanted to be there with them.

Negative: Photography as extended foreplay. Irit meets Noam in a park in this Israeli vignette, and she’s old enough to be his grandmother—-but could they please just get it on already?

The Funeral: Poor cat.

MLK: A Living Legacy: A rainbow of Americans extols the work of the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. A tidy if discursive survey film worthy of a visitors center, but not much else.

Hatch: In Vienna, one couple chooses to give up its baby—and another steals it. In the end no one’s happy—certainly not me, anyway. Film’s tiny, I get it, but why so much emotional shorthand?

Crossing: A black teenager in 1965 rural Georgia struggles with his preacher father and Jim Crow, coming to terms with how the former chooses to suffer (or is it endure?) the latter.

Cookies: Intro credits as conceptual art.

Cuckatoo: Michael orders a girl from the “Reality Dreams” agency to impersonate his ex-girlfriend, but the impersonator can’t nail the accent. “She’s fucking English!” Goofy. Then tender.

Saturday at 4:30 p.m. at E Street Cinema (followed by Q&A)

Monday at 5 p.m. at E Street Cinema