While this year’s Vancouver Short Film Festival, which runs from Friday to Sunday (November 14 to 16) at the Vancity Theatre, spans the range from web series to visual effects and animation, a few selections tackle some heavy issues.

“One of the things I noticed was the theme of death coming through,” festival director Kelly St-Laurent said by phone. “It sounds so morbid, but there was something really beautiful about it, just sort of the exploration of life and the filmmakers’ approach to it.”

St-Laurent also felt the need to include important stories told in thought-provoking ways. For instance, the documentary short “Little Moccasins” observes elementary-school students honouring the unmarked graves of abused aboriginal students who died between 1889 and 1924 while attending a Calgary residential school. The 20-minute documentary “Sayachapis” profiles the titular residential-school survivor, who experienced or witnessed starvation, rape, and other horrors but has persevered.

“You can see the suffering he must have endured,” St-Laurent said. “It’s an incredible thing to watch someone who isn’t bitter looking at the world in front of him.”

In the mix is the dramatic short “Sahar” (inspired by the 2009 Shafia murder trials) about the cross-cultural tensions within a Middle Eastern–Canadian family.

St-Laurent didn’t lose her sense of humour, though; she’s included “Dead Hearts”, a goth comedy about a child who’s a mortician.

For more details on the festival, visit the VSFF website.