Could you make a movie in 48 hours? That's the question filmmakers across British Columbia ask themselves every year during the annual Run N Gun Film Festival.
Recipe for a 2025 Run N Gun short film
Must include:
- A card as a prop
- The dialogue, "We're going to need a bigger _____."
- The number 10, visually or audibly
- The theme of TIME
Ingredients
- 48 hours ONLY
- Little to no sleep
- Very dedicated friends
- A massive amount of creativity
Teams begin on Friday evening, and must write, prep, shoot and edit a short film before the weekend is out. It sounds impossible, but this year, 160 teams managed the Herculean task.
The final Run N Gun screening in Vancouver on July 5 celebrated the 20 finalists, the very best of the best. Here's a sneak peek at just four of them.
It's not just the constraints of Run N Gun that connect these stories. In each of these films, the concept of time takes on it's most haunting form: mistakes of the past. Something is holding the protagonists back. Their flaws, their hangups, their secrets. Though the subject and tone are miles apart, each of these shorts follows someone reckoning with their past and trying to move forward. In their own way, of course.
Next
Next asks the question, “What happens to reality show contestants once the cameras cut?”
The film is a quasi-Christmas Carol tale, but instead of Victorian figures, it features the ghosts of 2000s past. It's been years since Vanessa was a contestant on the MTV dating reality show Next, but she is still dogged by the sting of rejection that it left behind.
The flashback vignettes are enough to illicit a chuckle, but feel slightly disconnected from the heart of the story. That said, the fantastical images and editing tricks used to bring the past into the present-day story were super effective, and a joy to watch. Once Next gets its legs underneath it, it ties all of its disparate elements together into a satisfying ending.
The film reminds you not to let the past define you. By the end, Vanessa is able to let go of the insecurities of her 19-year-old self and embrace the joys of her life at this moment. Next will hit for anyone who needs that reminder. Also, 90s kids and Wheetus fans.
Cake Up Call
I thought that this was going to be the most straightforward story of the bunch. I was VERY wrong. Cake Up Call focuses on the arguments about everything except what you're actually fighting about. It takes this universal experience and turns it into a one-in-a-million afternoon.
Cake Up Call feels like a morality fable, a video game, and a fever dream all at once. While the ingredients for greatness are all there, they never quite combined into the silky smooth mixture I wanted them to. The ticking clock narrative builds tension to a point, but there was so much going on that it was hard to zero in on the story.
That might have been the point though.
I was bamboozled by Cake Up Call. The film leans into its wacky side, and left me with some of the most memorable images of the fest.
I didn't know that I needed to see an armadillo POV, but I absolutely did.
This is definitely a film that you won't soon forget. Just like the others, it's the mistakes of old that drive the story forward. For Emma and Kenny, the past is something that has to be faced head on. Cake Up Call is about how we handle our blunders and grow past them. Sometimes, we just need a little help from our friends. And Frederick.
Running Behind
We all have that one chronically late friend. They make you miss the trailers at the movies and lose the reservation you booked weeks ago. Sometimes, you just want to sit them down and explain that it's not just annoying, it's disrespectful. Well, that's exactly what the characters in Running Behind decide to do. But it doesn't go as planned.
Running Behind might be the film that surprised me the most. It's a simple premise, but it goes a direction that I truly didn't think was possible.
I really enjoyed the performances in this one. The whole cast sold me on a plot that could otherwise veer into the ridiculous. I expected to relate to the frustration of the long-suffering friend group, but I didn't expect to feel so much for the chronically tardy friend who is the source of it. It isn't lateness that's driving a wedge between these friends. It's secrets. Secrets that it's time to let go of.
This film flew by for me. Running Behind is a fast-paced and fun ride that will make you feel the same frantic panic as when you're, well...
Running behind.
Quality Time
If making an entire movie over the weekend doesn't seem challenging enough, why not try making a movie musical? I was impressed with Quality Time's fearless approach to topics that many might shy away from. It's a musical sex comedy about rekindling the spark of love in old age.
The songs are excellent for being created basically ovenight, and the comedy of the situation—an older couple shopping for a clock at a sex shop—was heightened by the musical medium. Suspension of disbelief is much easier when it's sung through. The filmmakers knew this and exploited it masterfully. Though the elderly protagonists are played by a pair of young women, I found that that didn't matter. I was focused on the story.
But the film is more than its central plot point. Quality Time is about a couple that desperately needs to reconnect. Coasting on the love that they've built throughout their shared past, they need something to make them come together. It might be a clock, but it might be something else too....
Personally, I don't think I would ever be able to accomplish what these filmmakers have. All of these movies are impressive achievements, and so creative that at first I didn't even notice the common elements they had to include.
What I did notice was the common themes. Sometimes we can get so hung up on the past that we forget to look forward, and all four of these shorts explore a different aspect of that dilemma.
Creativity is so often born from restriction, and it's always inspiring to see how people can take the same ingredients and come up with such unique ways to tell the same kind of story. That's the true beauty of Run N Gun.
But don't take my word for it. It's TIME you see for yourself.
Finals Block 1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t8hlB6RDlgo
Finals Block 2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u3igJIXqOdI
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