Karavidhe

Dee (Shezai Fejzo) and Adrian (Durim Isufaj) are strangers who have just met, hired for a pittance as day labourers and taken in the back of a transit van to a paint job by an unnamed bossman (Andrew Joshi). Eoin Doran's lyrical short, which is punctuated by Liszt's La Campanella, follows their day as they cautiously learn about each other.

One of the things that Adrian learns about Dee is that he can play the piano. We hear the Liszt and see the piano strings vibrating - not the only thing in this short film that comes with strings attached.

There's more to the story, of course, and it articulates one of the many downsides of the migrant experience, given that it is the bossman who holds the cards, not to mention an unpleasant trick, up his sleeve.

Doran doesn't shy away from the exploitation element of the men's day but keeps his focus on the men's response to what happens to them, so that the film becomes a warm celebration of resilience in the face of stacked odds. Cinematographer Tim Sidell showed his talent for capturing colour and light in Peter Strickland's Flux Gourmet and though this is a very different, more naturalistic film, he repeats the trick - whether he's up close and personal with a crayfish or lensing a flash of blue and green light in an unexpected place.

There's a lightness, in general, to the handling of this material, even if the metaphor element involving the karavidhe - the Albanian word for crayfish - of the title is laid on a little thick. A story that feels complete in itself but also open to expansion if Doran had a mind to take it to feature length.