Into the Valley

Monique Ward Lonergan and Emily Somers in Into the Valley

When I think of the films that I have enjoyed in 2024 their running times have, on the whole, been significantly less than two hours. The onscreen adaption of Claire Keegan’s novella Small Things Like These (1h 38m), Andrew Scott occasionally smiling in All of Us Strangers (1h 45m), and crazy gothic romcom Timestalker (1h 29m) all pack a punch into their short timeframes. The first two are gently paced affairs, the third frenetic, each in their own ways difficult for a director to achieve. It takes a lot for me to go to the cinema to see a film that runs for longer than two hours. The Holdovers, starring Da’Vine Joy Randolph and Paul Giamatti, coming in at 2h 10m was an outlier, but possibly my favourite of the year, a melancholic Christmas masterpiece.

Genuine short films, considered by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to have a running time of 40 minutes or less, are generally restricted to film festivals where it’s possible to show a bunch of them in a session. Yesterday was the Edinburgh Independent Film Festival, although you wouldn’t know it from their website. However, I managed to establish that there was a programme of short films being shown at the Cameo Cinema in Home Street, and - along with only a further six audience members - I was rewarded with some gems.

A dark comedy from Australia, The Funeral Planner written and directed by Jessica Trinity Fisher, and winner of the Cannes Film Awards Best Film for Kids, Snakes & Stairs from Mexican director Delia Luna Couturier were stand outs from a great selection.

But the best by a long shot was the classy Into the Valley from Emily Sandifer. Based on the book of the same name by Ruth Galm, this is a road movie like no other I’ve ever seen. Set in California of 1967, nothing is completely explained which makes it all the more intriguing. It’s not clear for example, who or what the main character, ‘B.’, played by Emily Somers is running from. Loose ends are always left in real life, so why not just leave them like that in films too? As for the lighting and the detail of this 20 minutes film, especially of the interior scenes, well, I can’t think of anything I’ve seen recently on which so much care and attention has been spent. Loved it.

Into the Valley gets another Scottish showing tomorrow, Saturday 30th November at the St Andrews Film Festival, details on their website here.

Emily Somers in Into the Valley