WHILE a certain amount of variation in standard is not surprising in the festival's Showcase programmes, which include a lot of graduate films, it was disappointing that the offerings in the Short Cuts programme were so unimpressive, since this is the fruit of a joint funding initiative between the Irish Film Board and RTE for short films by new directors.

By far the best, in terms of script, direction and editing were Damian O'Donnell's 35 Aside, which is a droll treatment of childhood agonies and the horrors of school and family life, and 81, the second part of Stephen Burke's trilogy about the Northern Ireland Troubles. While After 68 is set in Derry, 81 follows a French TV documentary crew as it films a Catholic and Protestant family during the summer of the hunger strikes in 1981. While the two families, who live on opposite sides of the peace line in Belfast, are counterpoised a bit too neatly, the personal stories behind the tired slogans and the depth of feeling, particularly in the reactions to the death of Bobby Sands, are very well captured.