The Vancouver International Film Festival always makes a point of sharing its worldly stage with homegrown work. In particular, the fest is a place to scope out future-headed talent that, more often than not, finds its feet in the short-movie form.

This year, there are a record 18 B.C.–made shorts sprinkled throughout the usual five or so packages of Canadian fillets, with an increased emphasis on reclaiming First Nations and other identities, plus a lot of cool animation and playful image-making. A program called Kith and Kin is not as family-oriented as you might expect. Some of the locally sourced shorts, like roughly made “The Movieland Movie” (about a Granville Street video arcade) and “Srorrim” (featuring residents of the Downtown Eastside), are really about ad hoc clans.

There are two real standouts that say profound, and profoundly different, things about blood relations. The first is Connor Gaston’s “The Cameraman”, a novelistic look back at a family member who carried the clan’s dark streak. The other is Sophy Romvari’s strikingly rigorous “Nine Behind”. The title nods to the time difference between Vancouver and Budapest, with a young woman making a long-delayed phone call to her aged grandfather. The film’s whole 12 minutes happen within a West End apartment, in Hungarian, and with fixed cameras shooting in fine-toned black-and-white.

“I only met my grandparents once, when I was very little,” she recalls, “and the film was my attempt to have the conversation with my grandpa that I never got to have before he passed away.”

Romvari, who also works as a graphic and multimedia designer, grew up on Vancouver Island and finished film studies at Capilano just two years ago. Now 25, she recently moved to Toronto and talked to the Straight just before heading back for VIFF. At this career crossroad, she’s pondering changing weather in the industry.

“There is a lot of pressure put on young filmmakers in Vancouver, and Canada in general. We’re told we need to make films that are commercially viable and will please broad audiences. There is a mirage in the distance that maybe if you hit that mark, you’ll eventually get to the stories you want to tell. The contradiction is that you can’t really make something commercially viable with no budget, filming in your mom’s basement.”

That said, she finds that sharing resources and ideas ups everyone’s game.

“There’s a small circle of Vancouver filmmakers who have created a support base for creating unconventional films—mostly short films. It’s a big step forward that this year at VIFF, many of those films have been programmed. For a city that thrives mostly on service-industry filmmaking, it’s exciting to see so many unique voices pushing to the forefront. There are big waves being made now, and it’s nice to have artists to look up to in my own country. I used to think I’d have to move to the U.S. to make the kinds of films I want to make, but I no longer feel that way.”

Still, there’s that whole dollar thing.

“Obviously, money will always be an issue in film, but I think it’s partly from these limitations that more interesting forms of filmmaking have been discovered. The issue is not just a budget for creating the film itself, but cost of living alone, especially in Vancouver. I know so many filmmakers there who could make incredible feature-length films if they didn’t have to work three jobs to pay their rent. But there are a few filmmakers still making it work regardless, functioning in a whole other mode, creating some fascinating results.”

Can that mode sustain itself, or will the cycle do its usual ebb-and-flow routine? The younger players haven’t seen too many turns of the wheel, and the digital domain keeps shifting faster than we can describe what it is.

“I think there is a real sense of a Canadian art form that was not present even 10 years ago, and that’s exciting to someone like me who is just starting out. As long as VIFF continues to be a platform for these up-and-coming artists to show their work, there’s enormous potential for Vancouver’s independent cinema to flourish.”

The Vancouver International Film Festival presents Kith and Kin at International Village on Thursday (October 6) and the Vancity Theatre next Thursday (October 13).