It’s unfortunate that the shorts programs at VIFF are sometimes given glancing coverage, meaning fewer eyes on mini-masterpieces like this NFB effort. Filmed over seven years by Oscar nominee Theodore Ushev ("Blind Vaysha"), “The Physics of Sorrow” uses hot-wax painting to animate its hypnagogic tale of an immigrant’s life between Bulgaria and Montreal, achieving a kind of transcendent vision of loneliness, regret, transient joy—all that bonds us, paradoxically, in our solitude. This aside, it’s such a technical triumph; a brief image of clouds viewed from inside a plane might provide the festival with its two most unforgettable seconds this year.

Rossif Sutherland provides the narration, based on a book by Georgi Gospodinov.