And we conclude our ReelGood Film Festival previews as we do every year, with an advanced look at this year’s slate of dramas.

“Advanced” may not be the right word here, or if so, “advanced” by only a small amount. The RGFF is tomorrow. So if you are reading this on Friday, you still have a chance to pick up your tickets. The festivities begin at 10 a.m. sharp at Lido Cinemas in Hawthorn.

This year’s dramas are a contemplative bunch. That may be true of any selection of dramatic short films, but it seems even more so with this one. Other genres tend to be higher concept in nature, requiring only a distinctive idea executed with panache. For dramas, there is usually not enough time for a full narrative arc or other elements of a traditional dramatic structure, so you’re looking for slices of life that reveal poignant truths, and often without any sort of conventional denouement.

The first and longest of these we’re previewing is Zac Torne’s Appropriate Measure, which runs nearly 30 minutes, meaning it does indeed have the time to meet some of those structural beats — if it chooses to. Or it could just spend more time with its pair of friends (Magnolia Minton Sparke and Tia Sebastien), who are meeting for a short time before one needs to leave for the airport. They’re trying to walk to a particular spot along the harbour, but get turned around by construction and other obstacles.

The film considers the impediments of technology and other signs of apparent “progress” in terms of us getting where we need to go, but its purpose is far less narrow than that suggests. During what is otherwise a sometimes banal conversation between the two friends, we learn about their dynamic and what other things they may be dealing with in their lives, casting a pall of uncertainty that belies the otherwise beautiful day.

Things said and unsaid remain a focus in Lionel Seah’s Withered Blossoms, in which a young woman (Stella Ye) visits her grandmother (Rachel Young) at a time that feels emotionally significant for both of them. For the granddaughter, it’s having separated from her longtime partner, a detail she is trying to keep concealed from her grandmother in order to maintain the benevolent gaslighting practiced toward loved ones of a certain age. For her grandmother, it’s being in that age, when she’s almost overwhelmed by the wisdom life has granted her, especially since it is intermingled with melancholy.

We’ve described the granddaughter as young, but the question of her actual age is a pivot point in the film. At one point she tests her grandmother’s brain by asking how old she (the granddaughter) is, giving the clue that she was born in the year of the rabbit. That the elder one can’t produce an answer for the younger one is a point of concern for them both, but also perhaps a certain realisation that the wisdom may be more important than the facts at a certain point. What they do with it is the key to how they go forward.

The most structurally ambitious of what is otherwise a group of straightforward dramas is Me and Mazzy Melancholy (speaking of melancholy). David Tse’s film runs only 13 minutes, but still manages to visit three different characters and storylines that don’t appear to have any relationship with each other, except that they underscore the sense of isolation and disconnectedness of our times.

Ginko Yin plays a kidnapper filled with ennui, who is trying to get a ransom on a woman with whom she’s formed something of a bond, even though that woman (Jillian Nguyen) is zipped up inside a suitcase. Hiroshi Kasuga is an older man who tends to the plants in his apartment, a pastime that appears to satisfy him except we can see something distant in his eyes. And Dennis Young spends most of his time zipped inside something as well, the costume of a penguin mascot, which means he’s presenting an alternate persona to the world, rather than the “true” him.

Despite its, yes, melancholy tone, Me and Mazzy Melancholy is a perfect example, especially in this year’s program, of the fine line between drama and absurd comedy. Really interesting films, though, are not readily classifiable by one genre or another. What they have in common is that they make us consider the unconsidered aspects of our world, and all 36 films being presented at Lido tomorrow are examples of that. We hope you’ll come out, and you can get your tickets here.