DESPERATION. The shorts opened with a portrayal of entrapment in Antonio’s Breakfast. This is an intimate insight to the reverse dependencies carers have to endure in caring for their loved ones.

Antonio’s desperation is matched in The Substitute, where a young female army clerk’s her freedom depends’by a cruel twist of fate’on her suicidal substitute.

The best spiel on desperation belongs to Cow Tipping. Caught in a bid to impress the girl and the respect of his brother Menke, Jan needs to best his brother. In a convincing portrayal of the rebellious desperation of children pushing the envelopes of adulthood, Cow Tipping lucks out on the hallmark of desperation’its fleeting and temporal nature.

LONLINESS. Booth Story, Supermarket Love Song and Home chronicle loneliness. In the first, a lonely car park attendant becomes obsessed with the hatching of an egg he finds. Then, a dignified pensioner reveals a penchant for his amorous past. Finally in Home, another old man returns home one day to find that everything has changed.

Home is a splendid story of a man who thinks his house is being robbed. The six-minute noir-style thriller ends with a sad surprise.

ABANDONMENT. Cotopaxi blurs the line between the real and the made-up. In shaky handheld cameras and a constant awareness of the camera’s form ala reality TV, this UK production sees Alistar return to the hippy commune in which he grew up to confront his deepest childhood fears of abandonment.

But abandonment is still told best by a child, and this child is Lucky’the plucky AIDS orphan who moves into the city in hopes of a better life. Lucky is composed of moments of loss and abandonment, but this little hero passes each trial with flying colours.