Encounters Film Festival, normally based in Bristol, is the UK’s biggest short film festival, showcasing the best of short films from both the UK and the wider world. This year, as with so many other festivals, it’s entirely digital. With approximately 250 films playing, it would be a disservice to the films to give a brief run-down of what’s good and what’s not, as so many festival reports do. Instead, these reports will be covering just one film a week, aiming to give each film the critical time and space it deserves.

First up is the Dutch film Vader — or Father in English — directed by Isabel Lamberti. A docudrama, the film opens with a long shot of a middle-aged man at work in a factory. Bulky and strong, he looks like a former boxer (though later conversations reveals he’s a former bowling champ). At home, the man Jacinto and girlfriend Alia — presumably playing their real-life selves — talk about the former’s visit to see “Shakur,” someone Jacinto hasn’t seen in six years. The next shot reveals a young man, certainly no older than 18, but that little switch-feint in the dialogue suggests a much longer history of parental estrangement, a series of broken chain links across parental divides, affecting every subsequent generation.

The father-son bonding road trip is a much-covered topic in cinema, with the reflective, introspective mood of Wim Wenders’ road movies such as Kings of the Road and Alice in the Cities being a definite influence. Lamberti takes the opportunity inherent in the set-up to look at such big themes as parental dynamics, estrangement and the ways in which marginalised and predominantly working-class BAME communities are offered little support by state childcare services. But these elements are not bludgeoned across the viewer; rather, they linger in the background, with Lamberti’s direction always arriving back at Jacinto’s and Shakur’s relationship with each other as it grows throughout the holiday.

Lamberti’s use of the camera is deliberate and still. The 4:3 aspect ratio suggests a certain stiffness in the relationship. Early scenes between Jacinto and Shakur are monosyllabic — the young man on his phone, the elder asking tentative questions to figure out how to talk to him. There is a stylistic link to Dutch-Bosnian director’s Ena Sendijarević’s feature debut Take Me Somewhere Nice, which had its UK premiere at Encounters last year, in that both films use a 4:3 aspect ratio to suggest stiffness and unsureness in their protagonists, with very deliberate framing cutting them off from wider contact. There is also the sense that Jacinto seems unsure of the camera’s presence. When he leaves Alia, the two share a long, passionate kiss that seems deeply private; when they turn around, both glance directly at the camera –non-professionals seemingly surprised to find that it caught that moment. Comparatively, the younger Shakur — having grown up with phones, selfies and social media — barely seems to notice the viewer’s presence, closed off into his own world. One recurrent theme throughout Father is how different generations communicate with each other, with the factory worker Jacinto doing his best to maintain physical conversation, whilst Shakur is shyer and less forthcoming with personal information.

The duo take a road trip and subsequently stay at what looks like an off-season beach resort somewhere along the North Sea (the sky is perpetually overcast, but all the seaside attractions like arcades, restaurants and bowling alleys are still in full swing). Their time together is punctuated by Jacinto’s calls back to Alia, reflecting on his past. Serving as markers to denote shifts in Jacinto’s relationship to his son, they also showcase Lamberti’s excellent stylistic technique, with each phone call shot differently. The first call takes place in a hotel stairwell, whilst Shakur watches TV in the room, and the shots dissolve between Jacinto and his girlfriend — between the icy, de-personalised architecture of modern hotels, and the warm glow of home. The second call follows the same pattern, but instead of a dissolve, the two figures are imposed on top of each other — in both cases, viewers may get the impression of a long-term stable relationship that has evolved into something much deeper: a partnership where both sides fully support the other. Cinema rarely depicts these partnerships, perhaps because they tend to lack inherent drama (“oh look, these two people are really happy together”), but here it forms a contrast between the warmth they have managed to built together and the warmth that Jacinto was seemingly never allowed to build with his son. The man longs to “complete” his family, even if Alia is not Shakur’s mother (on that matter, viewers never get even the faintest sense of his mother identity).

It’s only on the third call that there is a break between Jacinto and Alia — the latter is heard but not seen. But this is not to suggest a fracturing of their relationship, but to bring Jacinto closer to Shakur, as the camera cuts between the Jacinto and Alia’s conversation and Shakur enjoying himself on holiday. It’s at this point that Jacinto begins to open up, albeit elusively, about the painful events that led to Shakur being taken away by child services. Whilst it’s never clear what exactly happened, it’s evident tthat there’s been a period of great pain and regret for Jacinto. Shakur, for his part, seems like more of a blank slate — young children and teenagers of course, are often more likely to accept events as they are — but there is a sense that he is gradually beginning to understand the concept of his self-identity, as he probes into his dad’s past and begins to comprehend the sequence of events that have led him to his present day life.

The fourth phone call comes full circle. Now, only Jacinto’s voice is heard, presented as voiceover, with the camera focusing on the duo driving back from holiday. Though the pain is still present, there is a sense of relief in Jacinto’s voice in reconnection, offering hope for a better future for the both of them. Both men have been victims of forces and choices made outside of their control, and although it is unlikely that they will ever be free from the effects of those choices, there is a note of uncertain hope in the idea that they can re-establish a genuine parental relationship. In just 23 minutes, Vader presents a nuanced and complex picture of fatherhood, as shaped by both individual personalities and wider social events.

Fedor Tot (@redrightman) is a Yugoslav-born, Wales-raised freelance film critic and editor, specialising in the cinema of the ex-Yugoslav region. Beyond that he also has an interest in film history, particularly in the way film as a business affects and decides the function of film as an art.