Run and Gun 2025: Of Ships, Dances and Dreams, Sorry We Missed You, Best Day Ever, Our Friend Chris

Time. A card. A line of dialogue: “We’re going to need a bigger __.” And the number 10, somewhere. That was the surprise creative prompt for the 2025 Run N Gun Film Festival, where over 160 teams across British Columbia had only 48 hours to write, shoot and edit a short film.

The top 20 finalists of the festival have been revealed in anticipation of the screening gala on July 5th. I got early access to screen four of the short films, four that are completely different in tone, setting, and story.

However, maybe because I wanted to, I found a unifying theme to all of them. Yes, the Run N Gun theme this year was time, but these four shorts seem to use time as a way to explore loneliness or isolation. Through waiting, dreaming, dying or remembering, they show four different ways of feeling disconnected. Maybe these films are saying, each in their own way, that time leads to isolation? Maybe they're about piss. Let's see.

Of Ships, Dances and Dreams

The very first thing you notice when this short starts is the style and ingenuity behind it. A boat sailing on a stormy sea, with bed sheets as waves, and a miniature ship as the real thing. You're quickly drawn into this defined, dream-like aesthetic.

Personally, I think the idea works. There's a distinct style that's reinforced with everything: shots, acting, script, tone, background. We're all accustomed to "movie realism," and trying to achieve that look in 48 hours while balancing the surprise creative prompts would just get in the way. So, going for this different aesthetic feels like the right choice.

The story follows a ship captain who dreams of a past lover. There's a letter he never opened, addressed to "My Eternal Lover," and a nightmare creature seems to haunt his guilty dreams. It's very obvious that the captain feels regret for not reading this letter. The emotion is clear: this is a man trying to connect with someone who’s no longer here. The captain is alone, and the nightmare creature that taunts him is just inside his dreams.

The short is poetic and ambiguous. The problem is that, as with many shorts, there's a fine line between dreamlike and enigmatic, and this film sometimes crosses it. Most of the story is visual, as there isn't much dialogue. It's not very hard to follow, but at times it feels unnecessarily unclear.

Then there's the scenes with the nightmare man. From time to time, he yells directly to the camera, taunting the captain. Every time, it feels like a wasted opportunity to find a more creative and cohesive way to convey the same idea. Those moments pull you out of the story and the atmosphere, so after the third time it's hard to feel invested again.

Still, the look and feel this team managed to create in 48 hours is commendable.

Sorry We Missed You

This one feels more like a stand-up bit than a short film. A guy sits inside his apartment waiting for a package, which will arrive at some point between 10 am and 10 pm. He's missed the delivery 4 times now, so he can't miss it again. He's doomed to stay there, smoking weed, playing video games, and waiting.

At one point, he needs to pee. It goes on for a while. A little chuckle on your part. Then, it keeps going and going. Soon, you realize this is the central thesis of the short. It will live or die by this joke. Of course, the delivery guy shows up, but he can't stop pissing.

He makes his way out of the bathroom, filling up glasses, vases, and toys with piss on his way to the door. Will he get there in time to answer the door? Will he stop pissing at any point?

Yes, that is the central thesis of this film: “What if you peed so long you missed the delivery again?” It’s the kind of joke that could die fast, but the actor sells it hard. Honestly, he saves this one. You actually believe it when he's struggling with his endless supply of kidney water. There’s genuine physical comedy in the way he improvises his way out of the bathroom and to the door. He makes you care about his gargantuan piss. The film has heart, but there's only so far a single bladder gag can take you. 

A man imprisoned by logistics and bodily failure. A man so disconnected from the outside world that his entire day revolves around whether or not a stranger will ring his doorbell. But maybe it’s just about piss.

Best Day Ever

A dog, played by a man in costume, spends his last day on Earth with his human. You just know that the team behind this short tried to come up with the one thing that would make everyone cry. It's effective, but also manipulative.

To their credit, the film never hides what it's doing. As soon as it starts, you remember all those videos you've seen where an old dog gets to do all the things it loves before the end. As the story progresses, it's clear where everything is going.

In Best Day Ever, Charlie and Buddy celebrate Buddy's 10th birthday. We get to see this dogman treat every single act like the greatest thing ever. He pees on a fire hydrant, he plays with other dogs, gets his favorite treat, and the whole time he has a smile on his face that you hope your dog has when they're with you.

After frolicking around in the woods, Charlie takes a tired Buddy to the beach, where he gives him a birthday card. It's supposed to be a fun and happy moment, but Charlie starts crying, and Buddy can't understand why. It becomes clear that Charlie's getting ready to say goodbye.

Showing a human actor dressed as a dog was an effective way to show that human-like love dogs have for us. It walks the line between funny and sad, leaning into the weirdness just enough to avoid cliché. And it works, but it feels like that's where the idea stops.

I would have liked more exploration beyond trying to make you emotional. In a way, it feels more like a commercial than a short film. It's a nice, emotional ride, but sometimes it feels like it{s trying to manipulate you. "What if you lost the one creature that loved you unconditionally?" 

Still, the theme of loneliness appears again. Here, there's the looming kind of isolation. You're not alone yet, but you know it's coming. You see it in the way your very old dog moves around, every day a bit slower than the last, and all you can do is wait for it.

Our Friend Chris

Two friends go back to dig up a time capsule after 10 years. They go through the old memories they left in the ground, little mementos to dig through. Pokemon cards, a music box, Twinkies. Then, a man shows up, dressed as a kid. It's Chris, their best friend from that time, or at least their memory of him as he was then.

As the trio bonds, Chris asks the girls about their lives now. They talk about the things they loved back then: JK Rowling, One Direction, not having sex. But very quickly, Chris finds out nothing is as it used to be.

Well, Chris thinks, at least those two are still the same. But they aren't. They've grown apart. Apparently, one of them thinks they're still best friends, but the other one says they just send memes back and forth.

However, the ending feels a bit rushed. Everyone goes from 0 to 100 in a second. In a 15 second scene, the two friends fight, Chris says everyone is mean, and he tries to go back in time. It feels a bit manufactured, the classic fight at the end of the second act.

Chris is nostalgia made flesh, and he doesn’t like what the world has become. It's a neat thought experiment— what would your childhood friend say if they saw you now? In this case, Chris doesn't like the people they've become.

Here, isolation comes from emotional drift. People you love slowly move out of orbit. Our Friend Chris doesn’t demonize that change, but it does make you feel it. Th film wants to say something about friendship and how we grow apart even when we don’t mean to.

These shorts are different in any way you can measure, some are funny, some are cryptic, some are designed to make you cry. And, in their own way, they all ask what happens when you're left alone with your thoughts, your past, or an impossibly full bladder?

They highlight that feeling of being alone that creeps up on you. In every film, someone is stuck: maybe in a memory, in a bathroom, in a dream, or in their head. Isolation is the atmosphere that ties them together. There’s the kind of isolation you choose (locking yourself in to wait for a package), and the kind that happens to you (your dog dying, your childhood fading, your guilt nightmare demon chasing you across an oniric sea). These shorts cover it all becase they’re about people trying to reach out.